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THE NORTH DEVON COAST
WORKS BY CHARLES G. HARPER
The Portsmouth Road, and its Tributaries : To-day and in Days
of Old.
The Dover Road : Annals of an Ancient Turnpike.
The Bath Road : History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old
Highway.
The Exeter Road: The Story ot the West of England Highway.
The Great North Road : The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two
Vols.
The Norwich Road : An East Anglian Highway.
The Holyhead Road: The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two
Vols.
The Cambridge, Ely, and King's Lynn Road: The Great
Fenland Highway.
The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford, and Cromer Road : Sport
and History on an East Anglian Turnpike.
The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road : The
Ready Way to South Wales. Two Vols.
The Brighton Road: Speed, Sport, and History on the Classic
Higuway.
The Hastings Road and the " Happy Springs of Tunbridge."
Cycle Rides Round London.
A Practical Handbook of Drawing for Modern Methods of
Reproduction.
Stage Coach and Mail in Days of Yore. Two Vols.
The IngOldsby Country : Literary Landmarks of " The Ingoldsby
Legends."
The Hardy Country : Literary Landmarks of the Wessex Novels.
The Dorset Coast,
The South Devon Coast.
The Old Inns of Old England. Two Vols.
Love in the Harbour : a Longshore Comedy.
Rural Nooks Round London (Middlesex and Surrey).
The Manchester and Glasgow Road; This way to (;retna
Ciieen. Two Vols.
Haunted Houses; Tales of the Supernatural.
The Somerset Coast. [/« the Press.
THE NORTH DEVON
COAST
CHARLES G. HARPER
" Let us, in God's name, ad-venture one 'voyage more,
alivays ivith this caution, that you be pleased to
tolerate my 'vulgar phrase, and to pardon 7ne if, in
keeping the plain higktvay, I use a plain loiv phrase ;
and in rough, rugged and barren places, rude, rustic,
and homely terms." — Thomas Westcote, 1620.
London : CHAPMAN ^ HALL, Ltd.
1908
•A
PRINTED AND I!OUND BY
HAZELL, WATSON ANP VINEY, LD.
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER I
PAGE
I
LYNMOUTH
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
LYNTON — THE WICHEHALSE FAMILY, IN FICTION AND
IN FACT 21
CHAPTER IV
THE COAST, TO COUNTISBURY AND GLENTHORNE
35
CHAPTER V
THE NORTH WALK — THE VALLEY OF ROCKS — LEE
" ABBEY " — WOODA BAY — HEDDON'S MOUTH —
TRENTISHOE — THE HANGMAN HILLS . . 44
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI
PAGE
COMBEMARTIN, AND ITS OLD SILVER MINES — THE
CHURCH — WATERMOUTH CASTLE — HELE . . 71
CHAPTER Vn
" 'combe " IN HISTORY — MODERN 'COMBE — THE OLD
CHURCH 84
CHAPTER Vni
LUNDY — HISTORY OF THE ISLAND — WRECK OF THE
" MONTAGU " — LUNDY OFFERED AT AUCTION —
DESCRIPTION 106
CHAPTER IX
CHAMBERCOMBE AND ITS " HAUNTED HOUSE " —
BERRYNARBOR I23
CHAPTER X
LEE — MORTE POINT — MORTHOE AND THE TRACY
LEGEND — WOOLACOMBE — GEORGEHAM —
CROYDE — SAUNTON SANDS — BRAUNTON,
BRAUNTON BURROWS, AND LIGHTHOUSE . . I3I
CONTENTS ix
CHAPTER XI
PAGE
PILTON — BARNSTAPLE BRIDGE — OLD COUNTRY WAYS
— BARUM — HISTORY AND COMMERCIAL IMPORT-
ANCE — OLD HOUSES — " SEVEN BRETHREN
BANK " — FREMINGTON — INSTOW AND THE
LOVELY TORRIDGE 155
CHAPTER XII
KINGSLEY AND " WESTWARD HO ! " — BIDEFORD
BRIDGE — THE GRENVILLES — SIR RICHARD GREN-
VILLE AND THE " REVENGE " — THE ARMADA
GUNS — BIDEFORD CHURCH — THE POSTMAN
POET 177
CHAPTER XIII
THE KINGSLEY STATUE — NORTHAM — " BLOODY
CORNER " — APPLEDORE — WESTWARD HO ! AND
THE PEBBLE RIDGE I97
CHAPTER XIV
ABBOTSHAM — " WOOLSERY " — BUCK's MILL . . 205
CHAPTER XV
CLOVELLY — " UP ALONG" AND " DOWN ALONG " —
THE " NEW INN " — APPRECIATIVE AMERICANS —
THE QUAY POOL — THE HERRING FISHERY . . 2o8
h
X CONTENTS
CHAPTER XVI
PAGE
MOUTH MILL AND BLACK CHURCH ROCK — THE COAST
TO HARTLAND — HARTLAND POINT — HARTLAND
ABBEY — HARTLAND QUAY .... 224
INDEX 245
LIST OF itLUSTRATIONS
Lynmouth, from the Beach
Fvontisp
iece
Map of North Devon Coast
Facing
PAGE
I
Headpiece .......
I
Watersmeet ......
Facing
6
Lynmouth and the Tors, from the Beach
>.
12
Lyndale Bridge ......
17
Lynmouth, from the Tors Hotel
Facing
iS
Lynton .......
24
The " Bhie Ball "
37
Glenthorne .......
42
The Valley of Rocks
47
Lee " Abbey "
53
Wooda Bay . . .
59
Heddon's Mouth .....
62
" Hunter's Inn " .....
64
Trentishoe Church .....
.
66
The " Pack of Cards," Combemartin
,
73
Combemartin Church .....
.
77
Great Hangman Hill, and Entrance to
Combemartin
Harbour ......
.
Facin
g
80
Xll
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Widemouth Bay ....
Capstone Hill and the Concert Parties
In the Harbour, Ilfracombe
Lantern Hill, Ilfracombe .
Ilfracombe ....
Ilfracombe Church-tower .
Lundy ....
The Landing-place, Lundy
The Montagu, on the Shutter Rock .
The last of the Montagit, August, 1907
Chambercombe .....
The " Haunted House " of Chambercombe
Morthoe
Braunton Church ....
Sir John Schorne and his Dc\il
Braunton Burrows ....
Braunton Lighthouse
The Jester's Head ....
Pulpit and Hour-glass, Pilton .
An Old Door, Barnstaple
Old Room in the " Trevelyan Arms "
" Queen Anne's Walk
Barnstaple Church and Grammar School
The " Kingslcy Room," Royal Hotel, liidcford
Seal of Bideford .
Bidcford Bridge
Bideford Quay
" Bloody Corner "
Facing 84
. 89
Facing go
..
100
• 103
. 107
III
117
Facing
r 118
125
127
135
147
148
150
153
156
157
if^5
167
168
170
Facing
178
182
183
191
199
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Xlll
PAGE
Clovelly, from Buck's Mill ..... Facing 206
Clovelly, from the Hobby Drive
. 209
" Up-along," Clovelly
213
Sign of the " New Inn," Clovelly
216
A Clovelly Donkey
21S
" Temple Bar " ...
219
The Quay, Clovelly
220
Back of the " Red Lion," Clovelly .
221
Clovelly, from the Sea
225
Clovelly Church
226
Black Church Rock .
227
Hartland Point ....
229
Hartland Quay . .
237
Speke's Mouth ....... Facing 23S
At Marsland Mouth .
243
THE
NorthTDeyon
Coast
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
No one can, with advantage, explore the rugged
coast of North Devon by progressing direct from
the point where it begins and so continuing, with-
out once harking back. The scenery is exception-
ahy bold and line, and the tracing of the actual
coast-line by consequence a matter of no little
difficulty. Only the pedestrian can see this coast
as a whole, and even he needs to be blessed with
powers of endurance beyond the ordinary, if he
would miss none of those rugged steeps, those
rocky coves and " mouths " and leafy combes that
for the most part make up the tale of the North
Devon littoral. It is true that there are sands in
places, but they are principally sands like those
2 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
yielding wastes of Braunton Burrows, whereon you
even wish yourself back again upon the hazardous,
stone-strewn hillsides sloping down to the sea
that make such painful walking in the region of
Heddon's Mouth ; and there you wish yourself on
the sands again. It is so difficult as to be almost
impossible, to have at once the boldest scenery
and the easiest means of progression. At any
rate, the two are found to be utterly incompatible
on the North Devon coast, and it consequently
behoves those who would thoroughly see this line
of country to take their exploration in small doses.
As for the cyclist, he can do no more upon his
wheel than (so to speak) bore try-holes into the
scenery, and merely sample it at those rare points
where practicable roads and tracks approach the
shore. The ideal method is a combined cycling
and walking expedition ; establishing head-
quarters at convenient centres, becoming ac-
quainted with the districts within easy reach of
them, and then moving on to new.
The only possible or thinkable place where to
begin this exploration of these seventy-eight miles
is Lynmouth, situated six miles from Glenthorne,
where the coast-line of Somerset is left behind.
The one reasonable criticism of this plan is that,
arrived at Lynmouth, you have the culmination
of all the beauties of this beautiful district, and
that every other place (except Clovelly) is apt to
suffer by comparison.
Hardy explorers from the neighbourhood of
London (of whom I count myself one) will find
INTRODUCTORY 3
their appreciation of this coast greatly enhanced
by traversing the whole distance to it by cycle.
You come by this means through a varied country ;
from the level lands of Middlesex and Berkshire,
through the chalk districts of Wilts ; and so,
gradually entering the delightful West, to the
steep hills and rugged rustic speech of Somerset.
It is a better way than being conveyed by train,
and being deposited at last — you do not quite know
how — at Lynton station.
Of course, the ideal way to arrive at Lynmouth
is by motor-car, and there, as you come down the
salmon-coloured road from Minehead and Porlock,
the garage of the Tors Hotel faces you, the very
first outpost of the place, expectantly with open
doors. But, good roads, or indeed any kind of
roads, only rarely approaching the coast of North
Devon, it is merely at the coast-towns and villages,
and not in a continual panorama, that the motorist
will here come in touch with the sea.
To give a detailed exposition of the route by
which I came, per cycle, to Lynmouth might be of
interest, but it would no doubt be a httle beside
the mark in these pages. Only let the approach
across Exmoor be described.
I come to Lynmouth in the proper spirit for
such scenery : not hurriedly, but determined to
take things luxuriously, for to see Lynmouth in a
fleeting, dusty manner is to do oneself and the
place alike an injustice. But the best of intentions
are apt to be set at nought by circumstances, and
circumstances make sport with all explorers.
4 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Thus leaving Dulverton at noon of a blazing July-
day, and making for Exmoor, there is at once a
long, long ascent above the valley of the infant
Exe to be walked, at a time when but a few steps
involve even the most lathy of tourists in perspira-
tion. And then, at a fork of the roads in a lonely
situation, where guidance is more than usually
necessary, a hoary signpost, lichened with the
weather of generations and totally illegible, mocks
the stranger. It is, of course, inevitable in such a
situation as this that, of the two roads, the one
which looks the likeliest should be the wrong one ;
and the likely road in this instance leads presently
into a farmyard — and nowhere else. This is
where you perspire most copiously, and think
things unutterable. Then come the treeless,
furze-covered and bracken-grown expanses of
Winsford common and surrounding wide-spread-
ing heaths, where the Exmoor breed of ponies
roam at large ; and you think you are on Exmoor.
To all intents, you are, but, technically, Exmoor
is yet a long way ahead.
It is blazing hot in these parts in summer, and
yet, if you be an explorer worthy the name, you
must needs turn aside, left and right ; first to see
Torr Steps, a long, primitive bridge of Celtic origin,
crossing the river Barle, generally spoken of by
the country-folk as " Tarr " steps, just as they
would call a hornet a " harnet," as evidenced in
the old rustic song beginning,
" A harnet zet in a holler tree,
A proper spiteful twoad was he " ;
INTRODUCTORY 5
for it must be recollected that, although on the way
to the North Devon coast, and near it, we are yet
in Zummerzet. Secondly, an invincible curiosity
to see what the village of Exford is like takes you
off to the right. Cycling, you descend that long
steep hill in a flash, but on the way back, in the
close heat, arrive at the conclusion that Exford
was not worth the mile and a half walk uphill
again.
And so to Simonsbath, a tiny village in the
middle of the moor and in a deep hollow where
the river Barle prattles by. Unlike the moor
above and all around, Simonsbath is deeply
wooded. Simon himself is a half-m^/thical per-
sonage, one Simund, or Sigismund, of Anglo-Saxon
times, according to some accounts a species of
Robin Hood outlaw, and to others the owner of
the manor in those days. " Bath " does not
necessarily indicate bathing, and in this case it
merely means a pool.
The traveller coming to Simonsbath in July
finds himself in an atmosphere of " Baa," and
presently discovers hundreds of Earl Fortescue's
sheep being sheared. Then rising out of Simons-
bath by a weariful, sun-scorched road, come the
rounded treeless hills and the heathery hollows,
where Exe Head lies on the left hand, with Chap-
man Barrows and the source of the river Lyn near
by, in a wilderness, where the purple hills look
solemnly down upon bogs, prehistoric tumuli, and
hut-circles. Here, in the words of Westcote,
writing in 1620, " we will, with an easy pace,
6 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
ascend the mount of Hore-oke-ridge, not far from
whence we shall find the spring of the rivulet
Lynne." Hoar Oak Stone, on this ridge, is a
prominent landmark.
Presently, at Brendon Two Gates (where there
is but one gate), we pass out of Exmoor and Somer-
set and into Devon, at something under six miles
from Lynmouth. Alongside the unfenced road
across the wild common, as far as Brendon Rector}^
the sheep lie in hundreds. Then suddenly the
road drops down into the deep gorge of Farley
Water, and comes, with many a twist, to Bridge
Ball, a picturesque hamlet with a water-mill.
One more little rise, and then the road descends
all the way to Lynmouth, through the splendidly
romantic scenery of the Lyn valley and Waters-
meet, where the streams of East and West Lyn
unite.
Circumstances have b^/ this time made the
traveller, who promised himself a luxurious and
leisurely journey, a hot, dusty and wearied pilgrim.
To such, the sudden change from miles of sun-
burnt heights is irresistibly inviting. To sit be-
neath the shade of those overhanging alders,
those graceful hazels, oaks, and silver birches,
reclining on some mossy shelf of rock, and watch
the Lyn awhile, foaming here in white cataracts
over the boulders in its path, or smoothly gliding
over the deep pools, whose tint is touched to a
brown-sherry hue by the peat held in solution, is
a delight. It is a delightful spot, to which the tall
foxgloves, standing pink in the half-light under the
INTRODUCTORY 7
mossy stems of the trees, lend a suggestion of
fairyland.
The road winds away down the valley, its every
turn revealing increasingly grand hillsides, clothed
with dwarf woods, and here and there a grey crag :
very like the Cheddar Gorge, with an unaccustomed
mantle of greenery. Descending this fairest of
introductions to the North Devon coast, past the
confluence at Watersmeet, where slender trees
incline their trunks together by the waterfall, like
horses amiably nuzzling, one comes by degrees
within the " region of influence " — as they phrase
it in the world of international politics — of the
holiday-maker at Lynmouth, who is commonly so
lapped in luxury there, and rendered so indolent
by the soft airs of Devon, that Watersmeet forms
the utmost bounds to which he will penetrate in
this direction, when on foot. And when those who
undertake so much do at length arrive here, they
want refreshment, which they appear to obtain
down below the road, beside the stream, at a rustic
cottage styling itself " Myrtleberry," claiming,
according to a modest notice on the rustic stone
wall bordering the road, to have supplied in one
year 8,000 teas and 1,700 luncheons. There thus
appears to be an opening for a philosophic dis-
cussion of " Scenery as an Influence upon Ap-
petite." The place is so far below the road that,
the observer is amused to see, tradesmen's supplies
are carried to it in a box conveyed by aerial wires. '
And so at length into Lynmouth, seated at the
point where the rushing Lyn tumbles, slips, and
8 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
slides at last into the sea. One misses something
in approaching the place, nor does one ever find it
there. It is something that can readily be spared,
being indeed nothing less than the usual squalid
fringe that seems so inevitable an introduction to
towns and villages, no matter how large or small.
There are no introductory gasworks in the ap-
proaches to Lynmouth ; no dustbins, advertise-
ment-hoardings, or flagrant, dirty domestic details
that usually herald civilisation. The customary
accumulated refuse is astonishingly absent : mys-
teriously etherialised and abolished ; but how is
it done ? In what manner do the local authorities
magic it away ? Do they pronounce some incan-
tation, and then, with a mystic pass or two,
abolish it ?
CHAPTER II
LYNMOUTH
Lynmouth would have pleased Dr. Johnson, who
held the opinion that the most beautiful landscape
was capable of improvement by the addition of a
good inn in the foreground. We have grown in
these days beyond mere inns, which are places the
more luxurious persons admire from the outside,
for their picturesque qualities — and pass on. Dr.
Johnson's ideal has been transcended here, and
hotels, in the foreground, in the middle distance,
above, below, and on the sky-line, should serve to
render it, from this standpoint, the most pictur-
esque place in this country. One odd result of
this complexion of affairs is that when a Lyn-
mouth hotel proprietor issues booklets of tariffs,
including photographic views of the place, he finds
that all his choice pictures contain representations
of other people's hotels. This is sorrow's crown
of sorrow, the acme of agony, the ne plus ultra of
disgust. Resting on the commanding terrace of
the Tors Hotel, seated amidst its wooded grounds
like some Highland shooting-box, I can see perhaps
eight others ; and down in the village a house that
is not either a hotel, an inn, or a boarding-house,
9 2
10 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
or that does not let apartments, is a shop. And
I don't think there is a shop that does not sell
picture-postcards ! There are some few very fine
villas, situated in their own grounds, on the hill-
sides, but whenever any one of these comes into
the market, it also becomes a hotel.
And yet, with it all, there is a holy calm at
Lynmouth. Save for the murmur of the Lyn, the
breaking of the waves upon the pebbly shore, or
the occasional bell of the crier, nothing disturbs
the quiet. As there are no advertisement-hoard-
ings, so also there are no town or other bands,
minstrels, piano-organs, or public entertainers.
Rows of automatic penny-in-the-slot machines are
conspicuously not here. There is not a railway
station. Nor is there anything in the likeness of
a conventional sea-front. The Age of Advertise-
ment is, in short, discouraged, and I am not sure
that the ruling powers of the place have not some-
thing in the way of stripes and dungeon-cells
awaiting would-be public entertainers.
But, lest it might be supposed that the advan-
tages of Lynmouth end with these negative
qualities, let something now be said of its own
positive charms. It is daintiness itself, to begin
with, and so small and neat, yet so rugged and
unexpected, that it is sometimes difficult to believe
in tlie bona fides of its picturesqueness, which looks
almost as if it had been created to order. Yet the
evidence of old prints proves, if proof were wanting,
that Lynmouth — what there was then of it — was
as romantic a hundred years ago as it is to-day.
LYNMOUTH ii
Indeed, an inspection of old prints leads one to
believe that, though there are more houses now,
the enclosing hills are more abundantly and softly
wooded than then. /Vnd, with the exception of
the Rhenish tower built on the stone pier, every-
thing has been added legitimately, without any
idea of being picturesque.
That quaint tower, a deliberate copy of one
on the Drachenfels, owes its being to General
Rawdon, who resided here from about 1840, and,
finding his aesthetic taste outraged by a naked
iron water-tank erected on posts, built this pleasing
feature to harmonise with the scenery. An iron
basket, still remaining, was provided to serve
for a beacon, and now that Lynmouth is lighted
by an installation of electric glow-lamps, a light
is shown from it every night.
But let us halt awhile to learn something of
the rise of Lynmouth, as a seaside resort. At the
close of the eighteenth century, the place was a
little hamlet, dependent partly on a precarious
fishing industry, and partly on the spinning of
woollen yarn. But presently, fishing and spinning
were at once and together in a bad way, and
Mr. William Litson, the largest employer of the
spinners, found himself and his people out of work.
It chanced at this time that the new-born delight
in picturesque scenery, that had already set the
literary men of the age scribbling, had brought
some few travellers even into the wilds of North
Devon. They fell into raptures over Lynton and
Lynmouth : raptures rather dashed by the dis-
12 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
covery that there was no sufficient accommodation
for them. Litson, pondering upon these things,
and with wits sharpened by threatened adversity,
took opportunity by the hand, and in 1800, opening
what is now the " Globe " inn as a hotel of sorts,
and furnishing the cottages on either side for the
reception of visitors, became the pioneer of what is
now the great hotel-keeping interest of the two
towns. Litson prospered in an amazing degree.
Early among his patrons were Robert Coutts,
famous in those days as a banker, and the Mar-
chioness of Bute ; and the stream of visitors grew
so rapidly that by 1807 h^ was able to open the
original " Valley of Rocks " hotel, up at Lynton.
The adjoining " Castle " hotel soon followed.
About the time when Lynmouth and Lynton
were thus first rising into favour, the poet Southey
came this way, and wrote a description that has
ever since been most abundantly quoted. But
it is impossible not to quote it again, even though
the comparison with places in Portugal is uncalled
for, absurd, and entirely beside the mark.
Thus, Southey : " My walk to Ilfracombe led me
through Lynmouth, the finest spot, except Cintra
and Arrabida, which I have ever seen. Two rivers
join at Lynmouth ; each of these flows down a
combe, rolling over huge stones, like a long water-
fall. Immediately at their junction they enter
the sea, and the rivers and the sea make but one
uproar. Of these combes, tlie one is richly
wooded, the other runs between two high, bare,
stony hills, wooded at the base. From the
LYNMOUTH 13
Summerhouse Hill between the two is a prospect
most magnificent — on either hand combes and
the river ; before, the beautiful little village, which,
I am assured by one who is familiar with Switzer-
land, resembles a Swiss village."
And so with a host of others, to whom the hills
" beetle," the rocks *' frown savagely," the sea
" roars like a devouring monster." And all the
while, you know, they don't do anything of the
kind. Instead, the hills slant away beautifully
up skyward, the rocks, draped with ivy and moss
and studded with ferns, look benignant, and the
sea and the Lyn together still the senses with their
combined drowsy murmur, as you sit looking
alternately down upon the harbour or up at the
wooded heights from that finest of vantage points,
the *' Tors " terrace, after dinner, when the lights
in the village and those of the hillside villas
twinkle in the twilight, like jewels. The poetry
of the scene appeals to all, except perhaps Miss
Marie Corelli, who, in the "Mighty Atom," does not
appear to approve of it. This, of course, is very
discouraging, but the inhabitants are endeavouring
to bear up ; apparently with a considerable measure
of success.
" How soothing the sound of rushing water,"
observed a charming young lady, impressed with
the scene. I agreed, but could not help remarking
that there were exceptions. " My dear young
lady," said I, noticing the incredulous lift of her
eyebrows, " you do not know the feelings of a
householder whose water-pipes have burst in a
14 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
rapid thaw. Rushing water, as it pours out of
the bath-room, down the front stairs, does not
soothe him.''
The voice of the Lyn has, however, suggested
less prosaic thoughts, and has set many a minor
poet, and many minimus poets, scribbhng in the
hotel " visitors' " books. Nay, no less a person
than the Reverend William Henry Havergal,
staying at the Lyndale Hotel, in September 1849,
waking in the night and listening to that voice,
harmonised it in the following chant which he
inscribed in the book then kept at that establish-
ment : —
E^^rsllifciiil^ii^
Alto.
•iS
It is a beautiful anthem-like fragment, " like
the sound of a great ' Amen,' " and brings thoughts
of cathedral choirs and deep-toned organs. Haver-
gal, of course, as a writer of devotional music,
had a mind by long use attuned to finding such a
motive ; but I am not sure that another composer,
with a bent towards secular music of a si)rightly,
light-opera kind, might not, lying wakeful here,
find a suggestion for his own art in these un-
tutored sharps and trebles.
The Lyn in its final series of falls in the semi-
LYNMOUTH 15
private grounds of Glen Lyn, at the rear of the
Lyndale Hotel, sounds a deeper note, and comes
splashing down with a roar by fern-clad rocky
walls and between a scatter of great boulders. A
rustic bridge looks down upon the foaming water,
flecked with sunlight coming in patches of gold
through the overarching foliage.
No description of Lynmouth that has ever
been penned gives even a remote idea of what
the place is really like. I care nothing for Southey
and his comparison with Cintra and Arrabida, for
I have not been to those places, and don't want to
go : resembling, I suspect, in that disability, and in
the disinclination to remedy it, most other visitors,
to whom that parallel has no meaning. Lynmouth
is really comparable with no other place. It is
essentially individual and like nothing but itself ;
or, at any rate, like nothing else in nature. What
it does really resemble is some romantic theatrical
set scene, preferably in comic opera : the extra-
ordinary picturesqueness of it seeming too im-
possible to be a part of real life. There is the
quaint tower at the end of the tiny stone jetty,
there are the bold, scrub-covered hills, with rocks
jutting out from them, as they rarely do except in
the imagination of a scene-painter, and here are
the grouped little houses and cottages, mostly
with the roses, the jessamine, and the clematis
that are indispensable to rural cottages — on the
stage. Even the very fishermen seem unreal. I
don't believe — or at least find some difiiculty in
believing — that they, really and truly, are fisher-
i6 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
men, and almost imagine they must be paid to
lounge out from the wings on to the stage — I mean
the sea-front — in order to give an air of verisimili-
tude. They ask you, occasionally, it is true, if
you want a boat, but with the air of playing a part
that does not particularly interest them, and
every moment you expect them to break into
song, after the manner of the chorus in comic-
opera, expressive of the delights of a life on the
ocean wave, and the joys of sea-fishing.
Or, to adopt the conventions of melodrama,
as formerly practised at the Adelphi, and still at
Drury Lane ; here you expect almost to see the
villain smoking his inevitable villainous cigarette
(an infallible stage symbol of viciousness), and,
possibly in evening dress, that ultimate stage
symbol of depravity, shooting his cuffs by the
bridge that spans the Lyn ; and on summer even-
ings the lighted hotels down in the huddled little
street look for all the world like stage-hotels —
abodes of splendour and gilded vice, whence pre-
sently there should issue some splendid creature of
infamy, to plot with another villain, already wait-
ing in his trysting-place, the destruction of hero
and heroine. But, lest I be misunderstood, I
hasten to add that all these expectations are vain
things, and that villains really require a much
faster place than Lynmouth.
I have spoken already about the " fishermen "
of Lynmouth, but, truth to tell, that is but a con-
ventional term, for sea-fishing here is not the in-
dustry it is on most coasts, and the jerseyed
LYNMOUTH
17
persons who loll about the harbour are more used
to taking out and landing steamboat excursionists,
or accompanying amateur fishermen with lines on
pleasant days, than to enduring the rigours the
trawler knows. Rock Whiting, Bass, and Grey
Mullet give the chief sport in the sea, and in the
Lyn are salmon, salmon-peel, and trout, as you
LYNDALE BRIDGE.
may readily beheve by examining the trophies of
sport wdth rod and Hue treasured by Mr. Cecil
Bevan, of the Lyn Valley Hotel.
There was formerly, indeed, a herring fishery
at Lynmouth. Westcote speaks of it as existing
in the time of Queen Elizabeth. " God," says he,
" hath plentifully stored with herrings, the king
of fishes, which shunning their ancient places of
repair in Ireland, come hither abundantly in shoals,
3
i8 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
offering themselves, as I may say, to the fishers'
nets, who soon resorted hither witli divers mer-
chants, and so for five or six years continued, to
the great benefit and good of the country, until
the parson vexed the poor fishermen for extra-
ordinary unusual tithes, and then, as the inhabi-
tants report, the fish suddenly clean left the coast."
They were not friends of the Establishment. But
after a while some returned, and from 1787 to 1797
there was such an extraordinary abundance that
the greater part of the catch could not be disposed
of, and vast quantities were put upon the land for
manure. Then they totally deserted the channel
for a number of years ; a fact at that time regarded
by many as a Divine judgment for thus wasting the
food sent. On Christmas Day 181 1 a remarkable
shoal appeared and choked the harbour, and in
1823 another shoal paid a visit ; but since then,
the herrings have given Lynmouth a wide berth.
I have visited Lynmouth in haste and at leisure.
To arrive hurriedly and dustily, and to make a
quick survey, and so hasten off, is unsatisfactory.
Under such circumstances you feel a pariah among
a leisured community who are cool and not dusty ;
and you do not assimilate the spirit of the place.
The utmost satisfaction in the way of lazy enjoy-
ment (it has been conceded by philosophers) is
to watch other people at work. That is why, to
some minds. Bank Holidays, when the entire popu-
lation makes merry, are so unsatisfactory ; there
is no toil to form the shadow in your bright picture
of dolce far niente. Now there is a rustic gallery.
LYNMOUTH 19
with a pavilion, where you can take tea and be
consummately idle, built out from the sloping
wooded grounds of the Tors Hotel, and thence you
ma}^ if so minded, spend the livelong day watching
the people immediately below, in the central pool
of L3mmouth's life. Overhanging the road, you
watch the holiday folk who are taking it easy, and
those others who are making such hard work of
it, rushing from place to place. And I, even I,
looking down upon perspiring dust-covered cyclists
arriving, thank Providence that I am not such as
them : conveniently forgetting for the while that
I have been and shall be once more !
The " North " in North Devon raises ideas, if
not of a cold climate, at least of bracing air ; but
really, with the always up and always down of the
scenery, the rather more bracing atmosphere than
that of South Devon is forgotten, in the heated
exertions of getting about.
Why do people so largely select torrid July
and August for holidays ? For the most part it
is a matter of convention, but in part because by
the end of Jul}^ the schools have broken up. There
remain, however, large numbers of holiday-makers
who are unaffected by school-terms and would
resent being thought slaves to convention. They
can go a-pleasuring when they please, yet they
wait until the dog-days. Now Lynmouth, in
particular, and the North Devon coast, in general,
are exceptionally delightful in May and June.
The early dews of morning, the cool, fragrant
thymy airs, that in July and August are dispelled
20 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
long before midday and give place to brilliant
sunshine and a great heat, which are in themselves
enjoyable enough, but forbid much joy in consider-
able exercise, remain more or less throughout the
day in those earlier months. September, too,
when the fervency of summer mellows into an
autumnal glow, has its own particular charm.
CHAPTER III
LYNTON — THE WICHEHALSE FAMILY, IN FICTION
AND IN FACT
There is more difference between Lynmoiith and
Lynton than is found in the mere geographical
fact that the one is situated over four hundred and
twenty feet below the other; a certain jealousy
on the one side and a little-veiled contempt on the
other exist. Lynmouth people do not speak in
terms of affection of Lynton. " Suburban," they
say, and certainly Lynton is overbuilt. Moreover,
at L^niton, although it is on a height, you stew in
the sun. It is cooler down below, at Lynmouth,
rejoicing in the refreshing breezes blowing off the
sea.
And there is no doubt that Lynmouth prides
itself on being exclusive. As already shown, it
does not cater for the crowd. Up at Lynton you
are in the world and of the world, and find some-
thing of all sorts. Lynmouth's idea of Lynton is
instructive. It is that of a place where the gnomes
work, who labour for the convenience and enjoy-
ment of the village down by the sea : only here you
have the paradox that the underworld of these
labouring sprites is above, and that the socially
superior place is the, geographically, nether world.
22 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
It is only fair to remark that Lynton does by no
means agree with these estimates of itself, and is
indeed, a bright, clean, pretty little town, with
its own individuality, and an amazing number of
hotels, boarding-houses, and lodgings, the houses
mostly built in excellent taste ; and I assure you
I have seen no such thing as a gnome there. You
do not, generally, on the North Devon coast, as
so often in South Devon, find the scenery outraged
by a terrible lack of taste, displayed in a plenitude
of plaster.
When Mr. Louis Jennings passed this wa}^,
about 1890, the Cliff Railway, or lift, was newly
opened, but the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway
was not yet in being. Lynton, nevertheless, was
in the throes of expansion, and he found " the
hand of man doing its usual fatal work on one of
the loveliest spots our country has to boast of.
F^laring notices everywhere proclaim the fact that
building sites are procurable through the usual
cliannels ; this estate and the other has been
' laid out ' ; the lady reduced in circumstances,
and with spare rooms on her hands, watches you
from behind the window-blinds ; red cards are
stuck in windows denoting that anything and
everything is to be sold or let. A long and
grievous gash has been torn in the side of the
beautiful hill opposite Lynmouth — a gash which
must leave behind it a broad scar never to be
healed.
" 'Who has done this ? ' I sorrowfully asked
the waiter at the hotel.
LYNTON 23
" ' Tit-Bits, sir.'
" ' Who ? ' said I, thinking the waiter was out
of his mind.
" ' Tit-Bits,' the man rephed.
" ' Well, then,' said I, ' what has Tit-Bits done
it for ? '
" ' To make a lift, sir. Some people complain
of the hill, and so this lift will shoot 'em up and
down it, like it does at Scarborough. They say
it will be a very good spec. You see, sir, he
came along here and bought the land ; and I have
heard say that Rare-Bits is coming too, and means
to make a railroad.' "
However, as this horrified traveller was fain
to acknowledge, even although these things had
come to pass and though the once old-fashioned
hotel had been changed into " a huge, staring
structure, assailing the eye at every turn " — he
meant the Valley of Rocks Hotel — " it will take
a long time to spoil Lynton utterly."
Very much more has been done to Lynton
since then, and building has gone on uninter-
ruptedly. The narrow-gauge Lynton and Barn-
staple Railway — the " Toy Railway," as it is
often called, from its rather less than two-foot
gauge — -opened in 1898, has been a disappointing
enterprise for its shareholders, but has brought
much expansion. Probably it would have been
a better speculation had its Lynton terminus been
in the town, rather than hidden on the almost
inaccessible heights of " Mount Sinai," another
climb of about two hundred feet. The service is
24
THE NORTH DEVON COAST
so infrequent and the pace so slow that, coupled
with the initial difficulty of finding it at all, the
traveller can perform a good deal of his journey
by road to any place along the route, before the
train starts. And an energetic cyclist can, any day,
make a very creditable race with it.
Lynton has now become no inconsiderable
town, very bustling and cheerful in summer : its
narrow street quite built in with the tall " Valley
of Rocks Hotel " aforesaid, and a large number
of shops and business premises not in the least
rural. Between them, they contrive to make
the old parish church look singularly out of place.
That is just the irony of it ! The interloping,
hulking buildings themselves are alien from the
LYNTON 25
spirit of the neighbourhood, but they have con-
trived to impress most people the other way.
" How odd," unthinking strangers exclaim, as
they see a rustic church and grassy, tree-shaded
churchyard amid the bricks and mortar ; not
pausing to consider that the church has been here
hundreds of years, and few of the buildings around
more than twenty. But there is little really
ancient remaining of the church, for it was re-
built, with the exception of the tower, in 1741, and
has been added to and altered at different times
since then. Quite recently it has again, to all
intents, been rebuilt, and fitted and furnished
most artistically, in the newer school of eccle-
siastical decoration. Those who are sick at heart
with the stereotyped patterns of the usual eccle-
siastical furnisher, with his stock designs in lecterns
and anaemic stained-glass saints, his encaustic
tiles with an eternity of repetitive geometrical
patterns, and indeed everything that is his, will
welcome the something individual that here, and
in some few other favoured places, may be found
to redress the dreary monotony.
Everything within Lynton church has been
smartened up and clean-swept ; even the old wall-
tablet in memory of Hugh Wichehalse has been
gilded and tended until it glows like a modern
antique, unlike the genuinely old relic it is. And
since much of the ancient history of Lynton and
its neighbourhood is inseparable from the story of
the Wichehalse family, let that story be told here.
In the many old guide-books that treat of
4
26 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Lynton, it is stated, with much show of circum-
stantial evidence, that the Wichehalses were of
Dutch origin, and fled from HoHand about 1567,
to escape the persecution of the Protestants.
We are even told how " Hughe de Wichehalse "
was " head of a noble and opulent family," and
learn how he had fought in the Low Countries
against the persecuting Spaniards. Harrowing
accounts are even given of his narrow escape, with
wife and family, to England.
But the supremest effort is the legend, narrated
in a score of guide-books, of Jennifrid Wichehalse
and the false '' Lord Auberley," who loved and
who rode away, in the days of Charles the First.
It is a tale, narrated with harrowing details, of a
daughter's despair, of a tragic leap from the
heights of " Duty Point " at Lee, and of a father's
revenge upon the recreant lover at the Battle of
Lansdowne ; where, with his red right hand (you
know the sort of thing), he struck down the for-
sworn lord in death. Follows then the sequel :
how the father, a Royalist, was persecuted, and
forced, with kith and kin, to put off in a boat from
Lee. " The surf dashed high over the rocky
shore, as a boat manned by ten persons, the faith-
ful retainers of this branch of the house of de
Wichehalse, pushed desperately into the raging
waters. It was never more heard of."
But that is all fudge and nonsense. There was
never a Jennifrid Wichehalse ; still less, if that be
possible, was there ever a Lord Auberley, and the
Wichehalse family did not end in the way de-
THE WICHEHALSE FAMILY 27
scribed. All those things are doubtless creditable
to the imagination of their compilers, but they
do not redound either to their sincerity, or to the
tepid interest taken in the neighbourhood by past
generations of visitors. Any cock-and-a-bull story
sufficed until recently, but now that local history
is acknowledged to be not unworthy of research,
it has been proved to demonstration by pains-
taking local antiquaries that the Wichehalses were
not Dutch, but of an ancient Devon stock, and
that they consequently could not have been the
heroes of those hair's-breadth 'scapes ascribed
to them.
But their own true story is sufficiently inter-
esting. They are traced back to about 1300, to
the hamlet of Wych, near Chudleigh, in South
Devon, a hamlet itself deriving its name from a
large wych-elm that grew there. From the hamlet
the family drew their own name, spelled at various
times and by many people in some twenty different
ways ; commonly, besides the generally-received
style, "Wichelse," and " Wichalls."
It was in 1530 that the Wichehalses first came
to North Devon ; Nicholas, the third son of
Nicholas Wichehalse, of Chudleigh, having settled
at Barnstaple in that year. Like most younger
sons in those days, even though they might be
sons of considerable people, he went into trade,
and became partner of one Robert Salisbury,
wool merchant, and prospered. Robert Salisbury
died, and Nicholas Wichehalse married his
widow in 155 1 ; prospered still more, became
28 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Mayor of Barnstaple in 1561, and lived in con-
siderable state in his house in what is now Cross
(formerly Crock) Street. The great wealth he
accumulated may best be judged by mentioning
merely some of the manors he purchased : those
of Watermouth, Fremington, Countisbury, and
Lynton. To this eminently successful kinsman,
the nine children of his brother John, who had
died in 1558, were sent, as wards. His own
family numbered but two, Joan and Nicholas,
who came of age in 1588.
Nicholas, succeeding his father, retired from
trade, and is described in local records as " gentle-
man," and appears incidentally in them as wound-
ing another gentleman with a knife, in a quarrel.
Something of a young blood, without a doubt, this
young Nick. He never lived to be an old one,
at any rate, dying in 1603, aged thirty-eight,
leaving five sons and three daughters.
Large families appear to have been a rule not
often broken among the Elizabethan Wichehalses.
It was indeed in every way a spacious era, and one
of the most continuously astonishing things to
any one who travels greatly in England, and
notices the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
century monuments in the churches, is the in-
evitable repetition of family groups, with the
reverend seniors facing one another, in prayer,
above, and the Quakers' meeting of children be-
low, boys on one side and girls on the other,
gradually receding from grown-up men and women,
down to babies in swaddling clothes. Early and
THE WICHEHALSE FAMILY 29
late the Elizabethans laboured to replenish the
earth and people the waste places.
Hugh, the eldest son of Nicholas, the buck,
or blood as I shall call him, was seventeen years
of age when his father died. He also had nine
children, and resided at the family mansion in
Crock Street, until 1628, when that terrible
scourge, the plague, frightened away for a time
the trade of the town and such of the inhabitants
as could by any means remove. It was a sorry
time for Barnstaple, for the political and religious
wrangles that were presently to break out in Civil
War were already troubling it. For many reasons,
therefore, Hugh Wichehalse, who appears to have
been an amiable person, and above all, a lover of
the quiet life, resolved to leave Barnstaple and
reside at Lee, or Ley, in the old thatched manor-
farm that then stood where Lee " Abbey " does
now. Here he died twenty-five years later, as
his monument in Lynton church duly informs us.
The epitaph, characteristic of its period, is worth
printing, not only as an example of filial piety,
but as an instance of extravagant praise. From
what we know of him, he certainly seems to have
been the flower of his race ; but, even so, he pro-
bably was not quite everything we are bidden
believe.
HUGH WICHEHALSE OF LEY,
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE
Christide Eve, 1653,
set. 66.
No, not in. silence, least these stones below.
That hide such worth, should in spight vocal grow ;
30 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
We'll rather sob it out, our grateful teares
Congeal'd to Marble shall vy threnes with theirs.
This weeping Marble then Drops this releife
To draw fresh lines to fame, and Fame to griefe :
Whose name was Wichehalse — 'twas a cedar's fall.
For search this Urn of Learned dust, you'le find
Treasures of Virtue and Piety enshrin'd,
Rare Paterns of blest Peace and Amity,
Models of grace, emblems of Charity,
Rich Talents not in niggard napkin Layd,
But Piously dispenced, justly payd,
Chast Spousal Love t'his Consort ; to Children nine.
Surviving th' other fowre his care did shine
In Pious Education ; to Neighbours, friends,
Love seal'd with Constancy, which knowes no end.
Death would have stolne this Treasure, but in vaine
It stung, but could not kill ; all wrought his gaine.
His life was hid with Christ ; Death only made this story,
Christ call'd him hence his Eve, to feast with Him in glory.
The play upon words, " 'twas a Cedar's fall,"
should be noticed above : it is by way of contrast
to the " Wiche" — i.e., wych-elm, in the Wichehalse
name.
Four years before the death of Hugh Wiche-
halse, his eldest surviving son, John, had married
one Elizabeth Venner. He distinguished himself
as one of the most bitter and relentless among the
Puritans of Barnstaple, and especially as a per-
secutor of the loyal clergy. He found it prudent
in after years to retire to Lee, and endeavour to
efface himself when the Royalists returned to
power. Whether it was for love he married again,
a woman of Royalist sympathies, after the death
of his first wife, who had been as bitterly Puritan
as himself, or wlietlier it was policy, does not
THE WICHEHALSE FAMILY 31
appear ; but, at any rate, when he died in 1676,
aged fifty-six, he left the family estates much
shrunken. The enriched Wichehalse family was
already on the decline.
His eldest son, John, was an ineffectual and
extravagant person, with a bent, that almost
amounted to perverse genius, to muddling away
his property ; and a wife who in every respect
aided and abetted him. After a while, they re-
moved to Chard, in Somerset ; then, returning,
he sold the manor of Countisbury, to pay his debts.
He raised repeated mortgages on his other pro-
perties, borrowed right and left from his own
relatives and his wife's ; and finally, at his death
in London, after the foreclosure of mortgages and
many actions at law, practically all his lands had
been dispersed.
His misfortunes were largely caused, according
to popular superstition at the time, by the part he
took in the capture of Major Wade, one of the
fugitives after the Battle of Sedgemoor, on
July 6th, 1685. Wade and some companions had
fled across country after the battle, and, coming
to Ilfracombe, seized a vessel there, intending to
make off by sea. But being forced ashore by
ships cruising in the Channel, they were obliged
to separate and skulk along the coast. At Farley
farm, above Bridgeball and Lynmouth, Wade was
so fortunate as to excite the compassion of the
wife of a small farmer named How. She brought
food to him, hidden among the rocks, and induced
a farmer named Birch to hide him in his still more
32 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
secluded farm on the verge of Exmoor. Informa-
tion leaked out that a fugitive was concealed in
one of the few houses at Farley, and on the night
of July 22nd, John Wichehalse, Mr. Powell, the
parson of Brendon, Robert Parris, and John Babb,
one of Wichehalse's men, searched the place.
Three houses were entered unsuccessfully, but in
the fourth — which happened to be Birch's — Major
Wade was hiding behind the front door, as the
search-party, armed, came in. Grace How ad-
mitted the party. Wade, who was disguised in
Philip How's rough country farmer's clothes, ran
off through the back door, with two other men,
and John Babb, raising his gun, fired and hit him
in the side. Wade was made prisoner. His
wound was healed, and himself afterwards par-
doned. It is a pleasing thing to record that he
afterwards pensioned Grace How, who had suc-
coured him in time of need.
The only tragedy of the affair was the suicide
of Birch, who, afraid of his part, hanged himself
some few days after the capture.
This affair deeply impressed the country-folk.
Wichehalse was thought never after to have
prospered, and it was told how John Babb was
thenceforward a man accurst. He left his master's
service and went into the herring-fishery ; where-
upon the herrings deserted Lynmouth. He died
unhonoured, and his granddaughter, Ursula Babb,
was afflicted with the evil eye. She married and
had one son, who was drowned at sea ; and
thenceforward lived lonely at Lynmouth, half-
THE WICHEHALSE FAMILY 33
crazed ; telling old stories of the departed grandeur
of the Wichehalses which grew more and more
marvellous and confused with every repetition.
It was she who told the Reverend Matthew Mundy
the legends, which he took down and first printed
— with many embellishments of his own — of
Jennifrid's Leap.
There was never (let it be repeated) a Jennifrid
Wichehalse. The feckless John Wichehalse, who
ruined the family, had three sons and one daughter.
The sons died without issue ; the last vestiges
of the family wealth being dissipated in their time
by the effectual means of a Chancery suit. Mary,
the daughter, married at Caerleon one Henry
Tompkins, and had one son, Chichester Tompkins.
She returned, in a half-demented condition, to
Lynmouth, and was used to wander along the
cliffs, the scene of her ancestors' former prosperity,
accompanied by one old retainer, Mary Ellis. At
last Mary Tompkins fell over a steep rock into the
sea, her body never being recovered ; and so
ended the last Wichehalse. To-day, in spite of
those large families of the various Wichehalse
branches, you shall not find one of that name
remaining in Devonshire.
To-day the Newnes' interest dominates Lyn-
ton. I shall draw no satirical picture of what has
been made possible by the Elementary Education
Act of 1869 and Tit-Bits. Such an alliance carries
a man into unexpected horizons, but with so many
Richmonds now crowding the field, the thing will
not be so easily repeated. On the crest of Holiday
5
34 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Hill stands the residence of Sir George Newnes,
Bart., and in the town the Town Hall he gave is
a prominent object : picturesqueness itself, in its
combined Gothic and Jacobean architectural styles,
and contrasted masonry and magpie timber and
plaster.
There is always, in the summer, a cheerful stir
in Lynton, and the railway has by no means
abolished the four-horsed coach that plies between
Ilfracombe and this point, and even on to Mine-
head. But when the close of the season has come
and the holiday world has gone home, what then ?
The hotel-keepers and all the ministrants to the
crowds of visitors must surely, to protect them-
selves from sheer ennui, institute a kind of des-
perate '' general post," and go and stay with each
other, on excessive terms, to keep their hands in,
so to say.
CHAPTER IV
THE COAST, TO COUNTISBURY AND GLENTHORNE
The six miles or so of the North Devon coast
between Lynmouth and Glenthorne, where it
joins Somerset, may best be explored from Lynton
by taking the coast-line on the way out, and re-
turning by the uninteresting, but at any rate not
difficult, main road. The outward scramble is
quite sufficiently arduous. The road sets out at
first, artlessly enough, full in view of the sea. It
rises from about the sea-level at Lynmouth,
steeply up to a height of some four hundred feet
at Countisbury, passing beneath a rawly red, new
villa built on the naked hillside by a wealthy
person whose hobby it is said to be to visit a fresh
place almost every summer, to build a house, and
then to move away. The name of the house I
forget ; suffice it to say that the Lynmouth people,
gazing with seared eyes upon it, know it as '' The
Blot." Below, on the left, is the strand known
as " Sillery Sands," which sounds like champagne.
Some style them " Silvery " sands, others even
" celery " ; but they are not " silvery " ; and no
celery, and still less any champagne, is to be found
there.
At the summit of this steep road are the few
35
36 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
scattered cottages of Countisbury, or " Cunsbear,"
as the old writers have it. Few would suspect that
the names of Countisbury and Canterbury have
an origin nearly akin ; yet it is so, " Kaint-ys-
burig " — the " headland camp," being closely
allied to the original Kaintware-burig, the " camp
of the men of Kent." But to the writers of a
generation ago, who wrote in a blissful age when
there were no students of the science of place-
names to call them to account, the name was
set down as a contraction of " county's boundary."
Distinctly good as this may possibly be as an
effort of the imagination, it is not borne out by
facts ; for the county boundary did not exist at
the time when the name came into being, county
divisions having been settled at a much later date.
Moreover, the boundary is a good three miles
distant. Old Risdon, writing in 1630, is even
more delightful. He takes what the scientific
world styles the " line of least resistance," and
gaily dismisses it with " probably the land of some
Countess."
But there is not much of this Countisbury,
about whose name there has been so much said.
Just a bleached-looking, weather-beaten church,
the " Blue Ball " inn, typical rural hostelry of
these parts, and the school-house. For the life
of me, I do not know which drone the loudest on
a hot, drowsy summer afternoon ; the bees or the
school-children at their lessons — the bees, I believe.
And that is all there is to Countisbury, you think.
This, indeed, is the sum-total of the village, but
THE COAST
37
the parish itself ranges down to the Lyn, which
forms the boundary, as the curious may duly
discover, set forth on the keystone of the bridge
that spans the stream, just outside the grounds of
the Tors Hotel, which itself is, therefore, in the
parish of Countisbury.
There is little within the old church, with the
exception of some line old characteristic West
THE " BLUE BALL."
Country bench-ends, one of them bearing, boldly
carved, the heraldic swan of the Bohuns and the
bezants of the Courtenays.
We here come to that great projection, Countis-
bury Foreland, past the school-house and by
footpaths. A lighthouse, very new, very glaring,
with white paint and whitewashed enclosure-walls,
near the head of the point, sears the eye on brilliant
sunshiny days. It was built so recently as 1899,
and equipped with the latest things in scientific
38 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
apparatus. It casts a warning ray on clear nights,
it moans weirdly in foggy weather, like the spirits
of the damned ; and, in addition, it has machinery
for exploding charges of gun-cotton at regular
intervals. It is wound up once in four hours,
and then proceeds to automatically produce
thirteen explosions in the hour. So, in one way
and another it will be allowed the shipping of the
Bristol Channel is well looked after. From this
point, the coast of South Wales is distinctly seen,
or is supposed to be. Visitors to Lynmouth have
no desire to see it, for the sight is a prelude to
rainy weather. The Mumbles is twenty-three
miles distant, and yet the hoarse bellowing (or
mumbling, if you like it better) of the lighthouse
siren there in thick weather is distinctly heard, like
the voice of a cow calling her calf.
Like all approaches to modern lighthouses,
the cart or carriage-road made to this at the
Foreland is a stark, blinding affair of glaring
rock and loose stones, very trying to wheels, hoofs,
or feet ; and the hillsides are covered with an
amazing litter of loose stones that have resided
there ever since the very beginning of things.
The place looks like Nature's rubbish-heap. The
way to Glenthorne by the coast-path, therefore,
looks more enticing. Something was wrong with
the explosive-signal machinery, the day when this
explorer chanced by ; something that refused
to be speedily set right, and the lighthouse
man who was attending to it was not averse from
ceasing work to give directions and, incidentally.
THE COAST 39
to get a rest. So, quitting awhile his labours with
refractory cogs, winches, and springs, he gave
elaborate guidance by which one might keep the
path along the rugged cliffs to Glenthorne. Not
often does he find a stranger to hold converse with,
and his directions were so long and full of paren-
theses that one quite forgot the beginning by the
time the end was reached. But the burden of it
was, " You go through those woods — they don't
look like more'n bracken from here, but they're
fair-sized trees, really — or else you can get to the
road at the top."
" I'll take the woods," said I, having had
enough of the glaring sunshine ; *' they'll be
shady."
" Yes — and full of flies," returned the light-
house man, " the place fairly 'ums with 'em."
How true that was : how entirely true ! They
are charming woods of scrub-oak, hanging on the
side of the scrambly cliff ; and one would fain rest
there awhile in the shade, on a moss-covered rock,
beside the springs that trickle down the side of
the cliff. But the celebrated " hoss-stingurrs " —
the large grey horse-flies — that inhabit the place
in force, and bite you through the thickest stock-
ings, forbid any idea of resting in that tormented
spot, and the beautiful thoughts that might have
found expression in scenery so provocative of
literary celebration, are lost in the defensive
operations that accompany an undignified re-
treat. It is in places a very clamberous path to
Glenthorne, and at some points more than a little
40 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
difficult and dangerous. So few, evidently, and
far between are those who come this way, that the
track kept open by the occasional explorer who
brushes aside the brambles and the branches that
bar his path, is almost overgrown by the time the
next stalwart forces a passage. Here and there
a steep little gorge requires careful manoeuvring ;
in some places, where the track emerges upon the
open, bracken-grown hillside, descending alarm-
ingly, and without a break, to the sea far below,
it traverses broken, rock-strewn slanting ground,
where a slip would send the incautious hopelessly
rolling into the water ; and at other places all
signs of a track are lost. It is here, as the stranger
goes chamoising up and down amid the tussocky
bracken, that he feels sorry for himself. The ex-
cursion steamboats passing up and down Channel,
half a mile out, command a fine uninterrupted
view of these cliffs, and the adventurer, questing
perspiringly up and down for any sign of a track,
is fully aware that some fifty field-glasses are
probably turned upon his efforts. He, therefore,
unostentatiously drops down amid the bracken
until those steamboats pass out of sight, beyond
the Foreland.
One of the cruellest dilemmas is that which
Fate is capable of presenting the stranger in these
perilous ways. He slips on a mossy ledge under
the shadow of lichened branches, and, to save
himself, grips in the half-light what he thinks to
be a foxglove, but is really a thistle. " Hold fast
to that which is good," say the Scriptures; and
THE COAST 41
although in other circumstances a thistle is
scarcely a desirable grip, yet, between the prospect
of rolling down some hundreds of feet and the
certainty even of excoriated hands, there is but
one possible choice.
In the middle of July, when the bracken is
come to full growth, the air is filled with the
exquisite odour of it ; a peculiar scent, heavy
and sweet, like that of a huge making of strawberry
jam. And presently, after much toil, you come
to a broad green ride, where you may rest awhile
and luxuriously inhale that fragrance.
Point Desolation is the name given to one of
the headlands on the way, and " Rodney " the
name of a cottage, now deserted, in a dark cleft,
overhung with trees. Finally, the green drive
conducts to a very welcome granite seat over-
looking a wide expanse of sea, and thence through
a gateway marked " private." This is the en-
trance to the Glenthorne grounds, which are not
so strictly private as the stranger might suppose.
Through the gateway, the path continues, bordered
here with laurels and fir-trees, and so dips down
toward the mansion, built in 1830, in the domestic
Gothic style, on a partly natural terrace, three
parts of the way down the wooded cliffs and hill-
sides that go soaring up to a height of five hundred
feet. The house is situated exactly on the border-
line of Devon and Somerset, and is in the loneliest
situation imaginable ; having, indeed, been in
the old days a favourite spot with the smugglers
of these coasts. It was built, and the grounds
6
42
THE NORTH DEVON COAST
enclosed, by the Reverend W. S. Halliday, a person
whose eccentricities may yet be heard of at
Lynmouth. One of his pecuhar amusements was
the sardonic fancy for burying genuine Roman
coins in places where it is thought no Romans ever
penetrated, with the expressed idea of puzzling
future antiquaries. It seems — since he cannot
GLENTHORNE.
be there to chuckle over the jest — a strange kind
of humour.
The long ascent from Glenthorne, through the
woods, is extraordinarily tiring, beautiful though
those woods be, and aromatic with piny odours.
The carriage-drive, zigzagging up, is steep, and
a halt by the way, every now and then, more
grateful and comforting than even a famous cocoa
is advertised to be. But that ascent in the shade
THE COAST 43
is a mere nothing to the further treeless ascent
to the coach-road, under the July sun. Bare
grassy combes, and white roads that wind round
the mighty shoulders of the hills exhaust the
wayfarer, who at last, taking on trust the pre-
historic camp of Old Barrow, perched on a steep
height, gains the dull highway with a sigh of relief.
I daresay a good many of the sardonic Mr. Halli-
day's Roman coins are buried in Old Barrow,
awaiting antiquarian discovery.
The way back to Lynmouth, crossing Countis-
bury Common, has some beautiful glimpses away
on the left, over the wooded valley of the East
Lyn.
CHAPTER V
THE NORTH WALK — THE VALLEY OF ROCKS — LEE
" ABBEY "- — WOODA BAY — HEDDON'S MOUTH
— TRENTISHOE — THE HANGMAN HILLS
And so at last to leave Lynmouth.
It is by no means necessary to take Lynton
on the way to the Valley of Rocks and the coast-
walk to Wooda Bay and Heddon's Mouth. The
cliff-path known as the North Walk avoids Lyn-
ton, and, climbing up midway along the hillside,
forms a secluded route of the greatest beauty.
It was cut in 1817 by a public-spirited Mr. Sanford.
Until that time, there was no path, and only the
most hardy climbers, at the risk of falling headlong
into the sea, ever attempted to make their way
by this route. It is merely a footpath, and so
not in any way injurious to the wild, romantic
nature of the scenery. Were some injudicious
person, or local authority, to conceive the idea of
forming it into a broad road, not Nature herself
could, short of a convulsion, remedy the scar
that would be made for all the neighbourhood to
see. Trees cannot grow on this stony hillside, to
hide such things ; the great gash made for the
Lift, or Cliff Railway, which here runs at right-
angles up hill, being only by good fortune screened
44
THE NORTH WALK 45
through ascending by a route affording foothold
for shrubs and undergrowth. It is now, indeed,
hidden in a degree those who saw the raw wound
in 1890 dared not hope for. Kindly Nature,
dear, forgiving, long-suffering, immortal mother,
to whom we all come, weary, for rest at last, to
your ample bosom, how great soever be our
enormities, you bear with them all and, smiling,
resume your way.
This rocky walk, winding past one grey crag
after another, is rich in towered and spired masses
and jutting pinnacles. Sometimes they rise up
for all the world like pedestals rudely shaped to
receive statues ; but they would need to be
statues of heroic size and pose to fit these sur-
roundings. The eye ranges along the coast, past
Castle Rock and Duty Point, to the softly rounded
masses of woods covering the hillsides enclosing
Wooda Bay ; and only the restless, resistless
spirit of exploration forbids long lingering here
and there, on those occasional seats provided by
the thoughtful Urban District Council that rules
the twin places, Lynmouth and Lynton, and
perseveringly tries to reconcile their jealousies.
But one must needs rest awhile at that point
where the North Walk, bending to the left, enters
the Valley of Rocks. Here a convenient seat is
placed, commanding a view backwards to Lyn-
mouth and the Foreland, and looking down from a
sheer height on to great emptinesses of blue, sunlit
sea. Seagulls wheel and cry, or poise suddenly,
on idle extended pinions, whimsically like a cyclist
46 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
" free-wheeling " ; excursion steamers, to and
from Ilfracombe and other resorts, go by, and in
the still August sea leave more than mile-long
creamy wakes of foam traced in the blue, until
they become indistinct in distance.
An elderly gentleman, who had hobbled up the
path on gouty feet, sat down beside me. Like
two true Britons, we sat there a minute or two
together, each ignoring the presence of the other.
He glanced a greatly impressed eye upon the
short, steep and slippery slope of grass that alone
intervened between his side of the seat and a sheer
drop of some two hundred feet into the sea.
" It would not be difficult to commit suicide here,"
he at length remarked.
Was he wearied to extinction with his gout,
and so determined here and now, to make an
end ? Not at all : it was a purely speculative
thought.
" The easiest thing in the world," I replied ;
" and one person might readily push another
over, and no one "
" Yes, yes," he rejoined with alacrity, and
relapsed into thoughtful silence a moment. Then,
suddenly consulting his watch : " Time I was
moving off for lunch."
Now I don't by any means, you know, regard
myself as a very desperate-looking person, yet ob-
viously that unlucky remark moved that nervous
old gentleman to go off in quest of his lunch at a
very early hour. I suppose he imagined himself
to have experienced a very narrow escape. " One
THE VALLEY OF ROCKS 49
does read such dreadful things in the papers,"
I hear him, in imagination, saying at lunch ;
" you never know what lunatic you may meet in
some lonely spot." True.
And so, into the Valley of Rocks. There was
a time when every writer who happened upon the
Valley of Rocks felt himself obliged to adopt an
attitude of awe, and to ransack the dictionary
for adjectives to fitly represent the complicated
state of mind into which he generally lashed
himself. That time has naturally been succeeded
by a revulsion of feeling ; and there is not a guide-
book at the present day which does not apologise
for those old transports of feeling, and declare
the Valley of Rocks to be really nothing remark-
able. But that later attitude is just as absurd
as the earlier. The valley is very fine indeed,
and its wildness is only impaired by the broad
white ribbon of road that runs through it, and
will not let you forget that here, too, however
craggy and precipitous the piled-up masses of
granite on either side, and however remote the
feeling, actually the most up-to-date civilisation
is very near indeed.
This is what was written of the Valley of Rocks
in 1803 : " The heights on each side are of a
mountainous magnitude, but composed, to all
appearances, of loose, unequal masses, which form
here and there rude natural columns, and are
fantastically arranged along the summits, so as
to resemble extensive ruins impending over the
pass."
7
50 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
So far, this is literally true, and the name of
Castle Rock, given to one of these stony heights,
grimly coroneted with masses of rock, is excel-
lently descriptive. The rocks so closely resemble
towers and battlements that the stranger is often
deceived into thinking them to be real masonry.
A companion rocky hill, isolated midway in the
valley, and called " Ragged Jack," from its
notched outline, is almost equally castellated.
It is only when the accoimt already quoted
proceeds to dilate upon the " awful vestiges of
convulsion and desolation presenting themselves,
and inspiring the most sublime ideas," that we
do not quite follow, and we suspect this was the
outcome of much competitive writing ; each suc-
ceeding writer striving to pile phrase upon phrase,
very much after the manner in which the rocks
of the Valley of Rocks are heaped upon one
another.
The " Devil's Cheese- wring " is the name of one
of these curious stony piles, now partly overgrown
with ivy. The Valley and the cheese-wring are
mentioned in " Lorna Doone," a romance no one
can escape in North Devon, strive though he
may ; although, really, the Doone Valley and
almost every incident of that story, are in, and
concerned with, Somerset.
A wind-swept little wood is almost the only
sign of vegetation, except the coarse grass, in this
wild valley of grey stones ; but it is the appalling
heat, rather than the wind, which troubles the
tourist in his passage, and he is often fain to
THE VALLEY OF ROCKS 51
shelter awhile in the welcome shade of some huge
crag ; thinking, as he does so, of that eloquent
passage in Isaiah, " The shadow of a great rock
in a weary land." And really, the Valley of Rocks
is very like the parched, stony land of Palestine,
which suggested the phrase.
It is at the close of some sultry summer day
that the Valley of Rocks looks its very best.
The irradiated sky, throwing into silhouette the
great masses of rock, has the effect of magnifying
and glorifying them. On such summer evenings,
the more youthful among the holiday-makers set
out from Lynton, and there, on the rugged hillside
of the Castle Rock or Ragged Jack, you may see
the white frocks of the girls, looking more than a
little like the white-robed figures of those Druids,
who, according to old Polwhele, used this place
of desolation as a temple, and carved the roughly
shaped rock-pillars and granite hollows into " rock
idols " and " sacrificial basins." On the summit
of Castle Rock a " white lady " of a different kind
may be seen ; a curious figure, resembling a
woman, formed by a huge slab of rock fallen
between two upright masses. The resemblance
is sufficiently close to startle strangers coming
this way at night.
The road goes under the rugged hills, past the
little inlet of Wringcliff Bay, overhung with ferny
precipices, to a gate leading into the domain of
Lee Abbey. All kinds of wheeled traffic may go
through by lodge and gate, except motor vehicles —
they are forbidden.
52 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Lee Abbey, occupying the site of the old manor-
house of the Wichehalse family, is an abbey only
in name and venerable only in appearance, having
been built in 1850. But although " Abbey " be
merely a fanciful name, and although there yet
remain people who have seen the building of the
entire range of mansion and outworks, the ivied
entrance-tower and enclosing walls have so truly
mediaeval an appearance, that many people are
entirely deceived, and, not seeking to inform
themselves, dream wonderfully romantic dreams
of " the old monks " and their religious life in this
secluded spot, and live ever afterwards in happy
ignorance of the deception. Lee " Abbey " is,
in fact, nothing more than a very charming
country residence, designed to fit an exceptionally
beautiful site.
High above it is the woody hill with look-out
tower overhanging that spot on Duty Point called
" Jennifrid's Leap," of which we have already
heard, and down below is the loveliest little bay —
Lee Bay — with Wooda Bay opening out beyond
it, and the little tumbled headland of Crock Point
and the swelling, scrub-covered hillside of Bonhill
Top in between. To style the little promontory
Crock Point is entirely correct, for it was the
scene of a landslip somewhere about 1796, when,
one Sunday morning, the hillside fields, with their
standing crops of wheat, suddenly slid down to
the sea in utter ruin. This was due partly to the
percolation of landsprings acting upon the clay,
and the cla3^-digging that had for some while been
LEE "ABBEY" 55
in progress, for shipment to Holland. The names,
" Crock Point " and " Crock Meads," probably
allude to this old digging for pottery uses.
Lee Bay looks like the choicest site in some
delectable Land of Heart's Desire. Down goes the
road, through another gate and past the most
entirely picturesque and well-constructed lodge I
have ever seen, and so out of this private domain.
Here a shady valley welcomes the heated traveller ;
a valley where everything but the generous trees,
and the cool shade they spread, is in miniature.
A little stream comes running swiftly down from
the hilltops, as though it, too, were eager to enter
from sunburnt heights into this place, where mossy
tree-trunks radiate a welcome coolness, and
hart's-tongue ferns grow in lichened walls and
look refreshing. The little stream presently falls
over a ledge of rock and becomes a little water-
fall, whose purring voice fills the narrow space ;
and everything is delightful. And there are not
any of those horse-stingers, which generally infest
the most desirable spots and, instead of confining
themselves strictly to horse-stinging, interfere
with inoffensive explorers.
The tiny bay that opens out from this twilight
lane is a quiet spot, where boulders are scattered
about amid the sand and shingle, with that look
of studied abandon customary in stage-carpenters'
versions of the seaside ; and surely we can give no
higher praise than that ! It is a spot where one
might fitly converse with some not too forward
young mermaid (keep your eye off her tail, and
56 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
such, by all accounts, should be presentable
enough) ; to be auditor of strange, uncanny
legends ; a thousand fearful wrecks " full fathom
five," and dead-men's bones and drowned treasure.
But for tales of drowned treasure, or *' money
sunk " and lost, which, after all, is much the
same to the owner of it — one need not go far, nor
seek the dangerous society of mermaids. Wooda
Bay, yonder, across the intervening neck of land,
has a modern story of some interest. It was
somewhere about 1895 that Benjamin Greene
Lake, of the London firm of solicitors, Lake and
Lake, conceived the idea of " developing " this
secluded and extremely lovely spot, and of making
it, as it were, a newer Lynmouth. He purchased
much land, caused many roads to be made to the
bay, and built an elaborate timber landing-stage
for steamers. A few houses were indeed built here
and there: among them the "Glen" Hotel, but
Wooda Bay has not developed to any extent, in
the building-estate sense. How many thousands
of pounds were lost here, seems uncertain ; ac-
cording to some accounts, £25,000, or by others,
much .more. Unfortunately, this was one of
Benjamin Greene Lake's many speculations
financed with other people's money — without
their knowledge or consent. He was sentenced in
January 1901 to twelve years' imprisonment, for
converting trust funds to his own use. He had in
various projects made away with no less than
£170,000 of his clients' money.
So there was an end of this great development
WOODA BAY 57
idea. Only a few scattered houses and the roads
gashed in the hill-tops remain to tell of it, for
the sea speedily washed away every fragment of
the timber pier.
The name of Wooda Bay, therefore, falls ill on
the ears of not a few defrauded persons. It is a
pity, for it is one of the loveliest bays on an ex-
ceptionally lovely coast. The Post Office authori-
ties have adopted the new-fangled spelling,
" Woody," instead of " Wooda," as appears by
the tree-shaded post-office here ; and the Lynton
and Barnstaple Railway, which has a station for
it, set down in a far-off wilderness, appears to
spell the name, with a fine air of impartiality, in
both styles. But the old rustic Devonian way
was " Wooda " ; a form characteristic of innumer-
able place-names throughout the country, and
exemplified near by, in " Parracombe," " Challa-
combe," " FuUaford," '* Buzzacott," and in-
numerable others.
Delightful lanes lead round the shores of the
bay, amid woods, with here and there a water-
fall ; notably at a point where a bridge carrying
a lane over a little stream is inscribed Inkerman
Bridge, 1857.
Near the shore is the unpretending manor
house of Martinhoe : the church of that parish
being situated high above, away among the wild
commons of a little-visited hinterland. It was
here and at Trentishoe, many years since, that the
future Bishop Hannington, who met a martyr's
fate in 1885 in the wilds of his African diocese, was
8
58 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
curate. He dressed the part unconventionally,
in a manner fitting a neighbourhood where there
were no Dorcas Societies, mothers' meetings, or
any of the quaint machinery of a modern parish.
Only rough farmers and their men, and wild and
unfrequented footpaths formed everyday ex-
periences. The typical curate would have soon
found his conventional dress very much out of
place. Hannington wore Bedford cord knee-
breeches of a yellow hue, yellow Sussex gaiters
with brass buttons, and great nailed boots that
would have suited a ploughboy. A short jerkin
of black cloth and a clerical waistcoat that
buttoned up the side gave just a professional hint.
In this costume, covered with the surplice, of
course, he would take the services as well ; not
from any eccentricity, but simply because the
conditions of these rustic parishes demanded it.
They demanded much walking, too. " I see you've
got fine legs," Dr. Temple, the rather grim Bishop
of Exeter, said : " mind you run about your
parish."
Over the wooded hill called Wringapeak, the
way now lies on to Heddon's Mouth.
There is no hint of monotony in this grand
stretch of coast scenery. Here nature is full of
resources and surprises, and each cliff-profile,
valley, wooded hillside, or little bay is strikingly
different from the last. Leaving Wooda Bay
behind, having already, as you tliink, tasted every
variety of scenic splendour, yet another aspect
of these boundless resources is revealed, in an
HEDDON'S MOUTH 6i
exquisite wood of dwarf oaks. Through this de-
lightful boscage, delightful in itself and in the
shade it gives on fervent days, the way lies, as a
grassy path. Great grey boulders, covered with
lichen, show on either side, in the half light, and
the foliage of the oaks grows in wonderfully large
lustrous leaves, by favour of this wonderful
climate. It is all so quiet. Few people are ever
met here ; but, here and there, at infrequent
intervals one finds a retired villa, three-parts
hidden behind the shrubs of its ample grounds.
One such you pass, and see amid the woodland
trees a little tombstone to a pet dog ; " ' Bruiser,'
a good dog " : concise, yet all-comprising.
When rounding successive points, new and
ever more beautiful views are disclosed, and
sublime thoughts rise, but they do not find full
expression in that form, because of the loose stones
and fragments of rock that everywhere prodigally
strew the cliff-paths. Midway between Wooda
Bay and Heddon's Mouth, a lovely waterfall
comes spouting down the face of the cliff, in a little
bight, the sides of it fringed with moss and ferns,
and at the foot a tangle of trees and bushes that
have found a precarious foothold. Here frag-
ments of rock, like some prehistoric rubbish-heap,
threaten unstable ankles.
These cliffs are simply huge masses of loosely
compacted rubbish — laminated stone embedded
in ochreous, friable earth — held together largely by
surface vegetation : gorse, grass, and rock-plants,
and in places the hillsides resemble engineers'
62
THE NORTH DEVON COAST
spoil-banks. But the horned breed of sheep that
browse here keep a wonderful foothold, in places
where no human being would dare trust himself
on the slopes, covered with slippery grass. The
cliff-path is usually solitary, and the occasional,
nearly human cough of these only living creatures is
therefore at first somewhat startling, in its ap-
parently half-apologetic note, like that of some
Paul Pry, who " hopes he don't intrude." Their
clattering walk along the loose flakes of stone, so
plentifully strewn about, is oddly like unseen
people roughly handling piles of dinner-plates.
Presently Heddon's Mouth bursts upon the
view, with all the force of a revelation. To observe
the coast-line from the deck of a vessel — for ex-
ample, from one of the big steamers that pass
HEDDON'S MOUTH 63
quite close in, on the way to Ilfracombe — may
seem (and is) a luxurious way of seeing these cliffs
and their openings. No foot-soreness, no scram-
bling amid incredible rocks : only a patronising
passing in review from an easeful attitude of
observation. But then, strangely enough, this
majestic succession of headlands, of bays, and
" mouths " is flattened and fore-shortened and
depreciated in a degree incredible to those who
have not tried both methods. Heddon's Mouth,
for example, looks by no means remarkable from
the sea. But viewed from either above or below,
on land, its grandeur is exceptional. From this
cliff-path on High Veer, whence you first see the
deep and narrow valley, or gully, or, as a Central
American might say, " canon," you look far up the
valley in one direction, and in the other out to
sea. The hills on either side are not rocky. They
impress rather by their enormous size and simplicity
of outline. Shelving down steeply to where the
Heddon flows at the bottom, only an occasional
outcrop of rock stands up. For the rest, they are
clothed in patches and streaks with bracken and
with a short, wiry innutritions grass, and very
largely strewn from top to bottom with countless
thousands of tons of rocky rubbish, blue-grey in
general effect of colour, and in appearance like the
refuse on the tip banks of mines. Oddly enough,
such a generous distribution of waste material
does not help to spoil the scenery. The hillsides
end, seaward, in grey, red and yellow-brown cliffs,
where an old limekiln, like a stone blockhouse fort.
64
THE NORTH DEVON COAST
lends a specious air of historic assault and battery
to the scene. Here the Heddon stream comes
trickling down among the boulders of the beach ;
sometimes indeed, when thunderstorms have
vexed the uplands, swirling down in a coffee-
coloured tumult and staining a calm sea for a long
distance out.
Winding footpaths lead up the lonely valley
HUNTER S INN.
and through a wood, and then conduct to a well-
known hostelry in these parts, the Hunter's Inn.
For many long years this was a picturesque
thatched house, but it was burnt down at last,
in 1895, and the new " Hunter's Inn," although
it is built very charmingly and in good taste, and
really is as picturesque as the one it replaces, has
not yet existed long enougli to compel the affec-
tions of the sentimental. There is a nameless
something in these things, an elusive flavour, an
TRENTISHOE 65
unexpected feeling, it may be, that the old inn was
picturesque by accident, as it were, and was the
natural product of its era and surroundings, while
the new was created to be self-consciously pretty.
It is a favourite resort of anglers, who, except
in summer, when pedestrians and carriage-parties
come this way, have the inn and the whole valley
very much to themselves, for there is no neigh-
bourly village and Trentishoe is a mile distant,
half-way up one of the steepest of hills.
Trentishoe has a church of the Early English
extremely rural type, with a little insignificant
tower ; but, although it possesses this church of its
own, no one would accuse it of being a village.
Two cottages by the church, a little group half-
way up hill, and another little group below, by
the Heddon, constitute Trentishoe.
The moorland to which the traveller comes is
the wild windy waste of Trentishoe Down and
Holdstone Down, considerably over a thousand
feet above the sea, scorching and drouthy in
summer and ferociously cold in winter ; but these
disadvantages, each in its season, have not pre-
vented hopeful, would-be sellers of building-sites
from erecting the usual notices of " this desirable "
land to be on offer. It has come to this at last,
that aU land is in land-agents' jargon, '' desir-
able," just as, conventionally, a naval or military
officer is " gallant," members of Parliament are
" honourable," and barristers " learned " : to
name but a few of those tags and labels that
nowadays mean so little.
9
66
THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Few are those who explore to the right hand
on this upland, where Trentishoe Barrow seems
to witness that, however ww-desirable the site may
really be for residences, Prehistoric Man found
it eminently suitable as a burying-place. The
" Great Hangman," the crowning height of these
cliffs (1187 ft.), obtains its ill-flavoured name from
5^^^ir^iii"'m^t;^
TRENTISHOE CHURCH.
an ignorant perversion of Pen an macn : the old
Cornu-British for " the Hill of the Stone," namely,
a rude, post-like monolith, standing something
over five feet high. The " Pen " was lost in
course of time and " an-maen " became by
degrees " Hangman," when the legend that now
attaches to the stone was duly invented to account
THE HANGMAN HILLS 67
for the name. According to this thoroughly
unveracious story, which old Fuller, who does
not appear to have disbelieved it, no doubt heard
from the peasantry, a sheep-stealer was crossing
the hill with a sheep slung over his back, and sat
down here to rest awhile, and, doing so, the sheep
in its struggles slipped, and the rope tightening
round the man's neck, he was strangled. Two
difficulties, however, meet us here (supposing, for
the moment, we take this tale seriously) — (i) How
the sheep-stealer could have sat down to rest on
a post over five feet high, and (2) How this
strangling accident could possibly in any way
have happened. Probably we may be met with
the reply that the standing-stone is merely a
monument of the affair, but the final quietus
should be given the legend by the fact that there
are numerous tales identical in every respect, all
over England : and it is unthinkable that sheep-
stealers were always being accidentally hanged
in such numbers — and in a manner demon-
strably impossible.
This region between Heddon's Mouth and
Great Hangman Point is without doubt the most
inaccessible nook along the coast. Roads avoid
the neighbourhood of the gigantic cliffs that for
the most part go sheer down into the sea, without
sands or beaches at their base, six or seven hundred
feet. And the combes, mouths, and valleys, that
here and there let down some streams to the sea,
are, if on a smaller scale than the gorge of Heddon's
Mouth, even more rugged and difficult of ex-
68 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
ploration. Sherracombe — or *' Sherry-come-out,"
as the fishermen name it — is particularly notable
for its stream that, rushing down this cleave in
the hills, pours out in a fall of seventy feet over
the rock-face. Somewhat east of it, over the
hillside and down a perilous climb, is " Wild
Pear Beach," a lonely spot overhung with
brambles and hawthorn bushes : the haws upon
the thorns in autumn being the " wild pears "
in question.
The Great Hangman ends in Blackstone Point
and beach ; a savage spot, now absolutely
solitary, but once the scene, together with the
neighbouring cliffs, of busy mining operations.
Combemartin, round the next bend of coast, was
for centuries famed for its silver mines, and in a
less degree for its lead, iron^ and copper ; and here
also rich lodes were evidently discovered at some
remote period, for the cliffs are honeycombed
with tunnels and caves excavated in the pursuit
of wealth. No road exists to these old excavations,
and the rock and ore extracted must either have
been shipped off by long-vanished stagings, or
hoisted hundreds of feet above by ropes. One of
these tunnels extends nearly 350 feet into the
rock, and with a plentiful supply of matches it
is possible to stumble along it to a great distance.
But scrambling in these wilds, in a climate such
as this of Devonshire, is an undertaking of the
most exhausting kind, and not to be embarked
upon by any except the agile or the robust. This
explorer, at any rate, is not likely to forget the
THE HANGMAN HILLS 69
scramblings up and scramblings down involved,
in company with showers of the loose stones that
encumber the hillsides ; nor the astonishment
exhibited at West Challacombe Farm on beholding
a stranger, stumbling upon the place by accident,
on the way to Combemartin.
There are remains in this old farmstead of a
vanished importance, both in the thick walls
carefully disposed and loopholed for defence, and
in the old porch surmounted by a defaced coat
of arms and the word " Pruz." It is said to have
been the rrianor-house of a family of that name,
long ago extinct, or its identity lost in the debased
form, " Prowse."
And so at last, steeply — always steeply up or
down in these parts— down a typical Devonshire
lane to Combemartin, meeting on the way a truly
Devonian farm-labourer, who remarked of the
sultry heat that it was, " Law bless 'ee proper St.
Lawrence weather."
" St. Lawrence weather ? "
" Ees, fay ; braave an' hot, sure."
" But why St. Lawrence ? "
'' Aw, then ; daunt 'ee knaw ? St. Lawrence
wer' king o' th' idlers, he wer'."
But why St. Lawrence should have that
unenviable distinction is more than I can tell.
There is, at any rate, an obvious connection be-
tween hot weather and the gridiron martyrdom of
St. Lawrence.
*^Lazy as David Lawrence's dog/' is said to
be a Scottish phrase : the " Lawrence " in this
70 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
instance being originally an imaginary " Larrence "
who presided over the indolent. In Essex, on the
other hand, your typical lazybones is " Hall's
dog" : e.g. "you're like Hall's dog, who was too
lazy to bark."
CHAPTER VI
COMBEMARTIN, AND ITS OLD SILVER MINES — THE
CHURCH — WATERMOUTH CASTLE — HELE
CoMBEMARTiN, Combmartin, or Combe Martin,
for it is written in all these ways, according to
individual fancy— derives the proprietary part of
its name from the " Sieur Martin de Turon," who
came over with the Conqueror and obtained the
grant of these lands, together with Martinhoe.
Local story tells how the last of the Martins of
Combemartin lived in a moated manor-house off
the lane near the church, and had an only son. One
day the son went off hunting, and as he had not
returned by nightfall, the drawbridge across the
moat was raised as usual. It was thought he had
stayed late, enjoying the hospitality of friends,
and would not return until next day ; but at
midnight he came home and fell, with his horse,
into the moat ; both being drowned. Unable to
endure the place afterwards, the last of the Martins
dismantled the manor-house and left Combe-
martin, never to return.
The manor has come, in turn, to a number of
families, among them the Leys, one of whom
built the extraordinary house, long since con-
71
72 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
verted into an inn, known as the " King's Arms,"
which, after the parish church, is the principal
sight in the place. According to local legend,
''Squire Ley" won a fortune at cards, and so
built his residence with fifty-two windows, the
number of cards in a pack. Hence the alternative
name of the house in the mouths of the people of
Combemartin, " The Pack of Cards." The interior
discloses some panelled rooms, with beautifully
decorated plaster ceilings of Renaissance char-
acter ; but the exterior, covered with white-
washed rough-cast plaster, and designed in a
freakish manner, is more curious than beautiful.
No one can see the house without wondering and
remarking about it. A sundial, inscribed '' C. L.
1752," on the south wall, was apparently placed
there by one of the bygone Leys.
Combemartin is a long, long village, one mile
and a quarter — length without breadth — lining
the road that runs down to the sea at the bottom
of a deep valley, and the inhabitants call it " Kuh-
mart'n." Charles Kingsley in his time called it
something else, something derogatory ; nothing
less offensive, if you please, than " mile-long man-
stye." They do not think much of Charles Kings-
ley at Combemartin.
Perhaps it is not so squalid as in his day ; at
any rate, although the long-drawn street is not
even now a pattern of neatness, it does not in these
times merit quite so savage a description, even
although the large population is made up chiefly
of poor market-gardening folk. For Combemartin
COMBEMARTIN
73
is the place whence come most of the early fruit
and vegetables for the supply of the neighbouring
towns. The hotels, not only of Ilfracombe, but
also of Lynton and Lynmouth, depend largely
upon Combemartin for their choicest supply, and
the gardens round about are quite celebrated for
their strawberries and gooseberries. No one in
the strawberry season, passing through Combe-
martin, has the least excuse for remaining ignorant
THE " PACK OF CARDS," COMBEMARTIN.
of the staple product of the neighbourhood, for
numerous pertinacious women, girls, and small
boys pervade that long street; offering bags of
what is, perhaps, the most delicious fruit these
isles produce. To purchase a basketful, you
think, at one end of the street, is sufficient to pass
you through its length without further challenge ;
but that is a vain thought. The Combemartin
strawberry-vendors have the most generous con-
ception of your capacity for their wares, and
10
74 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
appear to think that every bagful purchased is
an excuse for another. They are apt not to be
cheap, but they are undeniably fresh, and un-
doubtedly refreshing under the sweltering sun that
scorches the blazing street.
There was a time when Combemartin was busy
in a far different way. The silver mines of this
rugged valley were famous so far back as the time
of Edward L, and with varying fortunes they
continued at intervals to the early years of the
nineteenth century. Not until 1848 was the last
heard of them. At the beginning of these things,
it is recorded, 337 miners were brought from the
Peak district of Derbyshire, to work the silver,
tin, and lead. In 1296 " was brought to London,
in finest silver, in wedges, 704 lb. 3 dwt. ; and the
next year 260 miners were pressed out of the Peak
and Wales — and great was the profit on silver and
lead." According to Camden, the silver mines
here in the reigns of Edward TIL and Henry V.
were found very useful in defraying the costs of the
wars in France ; but for more than a century and
a half afterwards the industry declined, to be
revived in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. This
revival was due to the enterprise of Adrian Gilbert
and Sir Beavois Bulmer, who provided the working
expenses and agreed with the landowner, one
Richard Roberts, for half-profits. They realised
/^io,ooo each ; the fortunate Roberts therefore
appears to have sat still and twiddled his thumbs,
and received £20,000. Out of this unearned in-
crement he provided what is described as a " rich
COMBEMARTIN 75
and rare " cup of Combemartin silver, which he
presented to WilHam Bourchier, Earl of Bath, the
Bourchiers being at that time great and powerful
personages in these parts. It bore this whimsical
inscription :
" In Martin's Comb long lay I hiyd,
Obscur'd, deprest w"' grossest soylc,
Debased much w"' mixed lead,
Till Bulmer came, whoes skill and toyle
Refined me so pure and cleen.
As rycher no wheer els is seene.
"And adding yet a farder grace.
By fashion he did inable
Me worthy for to take a place
To serve at any Prince's table ;
Comb Martyn gave the Oare alone,
Bulmer fyning and fashion."
The mines were greatly troubled with the in-
rush of water ; difficulties referred to in the verses
inscribed upon a cup presented, like the other, in
1593, to Sir Richard Martin, Master of the Mint,
and Lord Mayor of London. This weighed 137
ounces :
*' When water workes in broaken wharfc
At first erected were,
And Beavis Bulmer w'*" his Art
The waters 'gan to reare,
Disperced I in earth did lye
Since all beginnings old,
In place cal'd Comb, wher Martin longc
Had hydd me in his molde,
I did no service on the earth,
Nor no man set me free.
Till Bulmer by his skill and charge
Did frame me this to be."
76 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Floods again drowned the works, and although
a report was presented to Parliament in 1659, ^-nd
other timid attempts made, nothing was accom-
plished until 1796. Operations were continued
for six years, and over nine thousand tons of ore
sent to South Wales, for smelting. In 1813, and
on to 1817, more ore was mined, but the cost ex-
ceeding the value of the silver obtained, the enter-
prise was again discontinued. In 1833 3- company
was formed, with a capital of ;f30,ooo, and the
works were once more reopened. iVbout half this
sum was spent in sinking new shafts, and in
machinery, but some very good lodes were dis-
covered, and three dividends were paid out of
profits. But eventually the shares were rigged up
to a high premium on the Stock Exchange, and
those who were well informed of the likelihood
that the lode would not prove a lasting one got
out at a profit, while credulous purchasers were
left to witness the prosperity of the undertaking
speedily melt away. By 1850, the last chapter of
silver-mining at Combemartin was ended. The
miners' rubbish-heaps still remain, and even at
the present day the urchins paddling in the bay
at low-water occasionally discover fragments of
ore.
Hemp-growing and the manufacture of shoe-
makers' thread were also industries carried on
very extensively in the reign of Queen Elizabeth ;
but Combemartin has long been looked down upon
as an abjectly poor place, and only its great church
and the surrounding scenery save it from being
THE CHURCH
11
passed by in contempt by the writers of guide-
books. Combemartin church tower, indeed, finds
mention in a North Devon folk-rhyme, in which
COMBEMARTIN CHURCH.
it is placed, for due admiration, with those of
Berrynarbor and Hartland :
" Hartland for length,
Berrynarbor for strength,
And Combemartm for beauty."
It is a tall grey tower, in four stages, rising
with some considerable impressiveness over an
78 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Early English and Perpendicular building that has
long been but ill cared for. The interior discloses
chancel with nave and north aisle only, the roofs
of that waggon-headed type usual in the West of
England ; the walls daubed with a light blue wash.
A fine fifteenth-century carved wooden rood-
screen, in a much worn condition, has been shame-
fully used in the past, the frieze having been filled
in with plaster in 1727, according to the date
inscribed on the work. The initials, " J. P., T. H.,"
probably those of the churchwardens who perpe-
trated the outrage, prove that, so far from being
ashamed of themselves they even took pride in
their work. A number of interesting bench-ends
remain, among them a delightfully carved little
lizard, who, unfortunately, has lost his head.
Some queer inscriptions in the churchyard,
whose like, now that education penetrates every
nook and corner, will no longer be perpetrated,
arouse a passing smile : among them this extra-
ordinary effort : —
Here Lyeth
IoHan Ash, she died in September
J668
loe here I slcpc in duft till clirist my deare
And Sweet Redeemer in the clouds Appeare
Here lyeth the Body of HnmphTy sHe who
diicd y 19 dAy of NoVEmbER 1681.
Bacon-Shakespeare fanatics have made crypto-
grams out of less eccentric lettering than this.
In these latter days Combemartin is making a
strenuous effort to be regarded as a " literary land-
THE CHURCH 79
mark." It is all on account of Miss Marie Corelli's
novel, " The Mighty Atom," and a certain class of
visitors sometimes come over from Ilfracombe
attracted by vague rumours of it. They are the
kind of people who, content to remain below and
idly examine the ever-open gates of the rood-
screen, supposed on insufficient grounds to be
symbolic of the heavenly gates, which " shall not
be shut at all by day, for there shall be no night
there," say to their younger companions, desirous
of climbing the tower : ''I'll stop down 'ere, while
you go hup."
The local photographer makes a brave display
of picture-postcards of the village and of the sexton
who appears in the book as " Reuben Dale," but
the thing seems to hang fire. James Norman was
the original of " Reuben Dale," and the present
sexton is alert to show you his grave, whether you
be interested or not. Norman died, aged 54, in
1898, and, it seems, the rector refused to allow the
pseudonym to be placed on the epitaph, by way of
advertising the novelist. You are told he declared
that he *' buried a man, not a miff " (?myth). Ap-
parently the rector did not approve of "The
Mighty Atom."
Local gossip tells how Miss Corelli informed
Norman he was to be made a prominent character
in the story, and that the circumstance would
make his fortune, as sexton. It proved the ruin
of him, instead ; for imagining himself a public
character, he took himself and the increased tips
he obtained from curious visitors, off to the
8o THE NORTH DEVON COAST
" King's Arms," or, maybe, the " Castle " ; and,
what with too much drink and a consumptive
tendency, he did not long remain to pose for the
inquisitive. His knowledge of ancient ecclesias-
tical arrangements and the uses and purport of
things, does not appear — judging from the novel,
which is understood to report him " as nearly as
possible " in his own words — -to have been more
reliable than that of the average sexton, or verger,
and we all know what broken reeds they are, to
rely upon for information.
According to his tale, suffiicient for the many
simple folk who are ready for any legend, the "altar
gates " — he meant the doors in the rood-screen —
** Do what ye will wi' 'em, they won't shut, see.
That shows they was made 'fore the days o'
Cromwell. For in they times all the gates o' th'
altars was copied arter the pattern o' Scripture
which sez : * An' the gates o' Heaven shall never
be shut, either by day or by night.' " So now we
know !
The road to Ilfracombe winds round Combe-
martin Bay, and, rising and falling abruptly, comes
down to Watermouth. Here an almost land-
locked bay, with a little strand, and hills on either
side, partly wooded, forms a haven, where it is
almost always calm, even when storms are raging
and a heavy sea running outside Widemouth
Head and Burrow Nose, the two enclosing points.
The headlands are honeycombed with caves,
prominent among them Smallmouth and Briary
caves. Like most things in the neighbourhood
WATERMOUTH CASTLE 8i
of Ilfracombe, they are to be visited only by pay-
ment. In every respect the best way to reach
them is by taking one of the rowing-boats that,
with competitive boatmen, are always to be found
here in summer. Watermouth Castle, looking
grandly out from its sloping lawns upon the sea,
should have a story. The ivy-clad, romantic-
looking, turreted pile wears as genuine an air of
antiquity as Lee " Abbey " itself, but candour —
WIDEMOUTH BAY.
we must all be candid when the local guide-books
are so explicit — obliges me to confess it was built
in 1826, when feudal castellans were things of
a remote past.
But stay, there is something of a story belong-
ing to Watermouth Castle, for it was here that
one of Miss Marie Corelli's funny villains, the " Sir
Charles Lascelles, Baronet," of "The Mighty
Atom," stayed, as one of a house-party. You know
II
82 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
at once, on being introduced to him in those pages,
that he is a bad Bart. We must not blame him for
that ; the baronets of fiction are always bad : they
can't help it ; it has to be. Moreover, he drawls,
and acknowledges his " doosid habits of caprice " :
so it is at once perceived that he is bad after the
ancient formula of fifty years ago. Any modern
wicked baronet would in the like circumstances
describe himself, in up-to-date style, as an " erratic
rotter." Which is the better phrase, I will not
pretend to say.
In between Widemouth Head and the suc-
ceeding headland of Rillage Point lies Samson's
Bay, followed by Hele Bay, enclosed on the side
nearest Ilfracombe by Hillsborough, i.e., " Heles-
borough " Hill. Hele beach and its hamlet are
now practically part of Ilfracombe town.
There is not, as a rule, much entertainment
in local guide-books, but occasionally some pre-
cious ore may be mined, out of the extravagant
but barren language they commonly employ.
There are, however, very few pennyweights of
amusement to be extracted from such tons of
boredom. But here, for once in a way, is a little
nugget, taken sparkling from an otherwise very
empty vein, descriptive of Hele : " Hele, with
its picturesque limekiln and cottages, almost
hugging one another around the village school,
deep down in a dell and surrounded by flourishing
trees." It is a pleasing picture, this, of the love
of the amorous, but coy, limekiln, for the equally
ardent but bashful cottages, and it moves me to
HELE 83
lyrically celebrate the neglect of opportunities
suggested :
Behind the school and trees they stood,
And ahnost hugged — the scene was so sechided ;
Just as, in ferny grot, or flovv'ry wood
(When we were younger, be it understood.
And ardent), sometimes I and you chd.
The kiln was hot and eager, and
The cottages themselves were rather forward ;
And, you must now most clearly understand.
It was a quiet, most secluded strand,
With none in sight, or land or shoreward.
When love and I roamed far away,
In quiet dell, I'd fondly kiss and squeeze her.
Did I refrain those tributes. Well-a-day !
There was the very deuce to pay :
I found my conversation failed to please her,
X X X X X X
And yet I hear, with shoulders sharply shrugged.
They only — " almost hugged ! "
CHAPTER VII
IN HISTORY — MODERN 'COMBE — THE
OLD CHURCH
Ilfracombe occupies one of the strangest sites on
this strangely contorted coast. Down upon it,
on either hand, look the great rocky hills of Hills-
borough and the razor-backed, spiny ledges of
the Runnacleaves, and the Tors ; while amidst the
winding roads of the town itself run smaller hills
and vales, and down by the sea, where other sea-
side resorts usually have a conventional flat
parade running by the shore, there are the Lantern
Hill, overlooking the harbour, and the Capstone
Hill, placed just where the usual sea-front would
be, if the site of Ilfracombe were other than it is.
Fortunately it is not. Between the two is Compass
Hill. The Capstone Hill — it was formerly, and
should still be, " Capstan " — runs up towards the
sea from the town, and presents, as it were, a lawn,
inclined at an angle of something like forty-five
degrees. When people most furiously do make
holiday, in August, this expanse is covered over,
day by day, with hundreds of figures, looking quite
tiny in the scale of things. Sometimes, when
Sunday Schools, or other institutions, come to
84
'"COMBE" IN HISTORY 85
Ilfracombe for their annual day out, they display
their massed forces in living devices or letters of
the alphabet, on the hillside, in view of the whole
town.
There is not, it has already been shown, any
conventional front ; and indeed at one time it was
only possible to approach the shore at Ilfracombe
at infrequent and isolated spots, such as Wilders-
mouth, or Chain Beach. That was in the times
before seaside holidays were invented, and when
Ilfracombe was only a small port. When the
modern town began to rise, it was felt that a little
more of the sea would be thought desirable, and
consequently the present " Capstone Parade " was
constructed in 1843, in the more or less perpendicu-
lar face that Capstone Hill presents to the waves.
It is a semicircular roadway carved out of the
rock, with rocky cliff above and more beneath,
and beneath that, the sea, dashing in violently.
The Capstone " Parade " has after all, you see,
the conventional name ; but, happily, it is not the
conventional thing.
Since we cannot treat of Ilfracombe without
touching upon its ancient history, it had better
be done at once, and an end made of it forthwith.
To begin with, it is not certain how the name
derived. In Saxon times it was " Alfreincombe,"
and from that has been hazarded the theory of its
having once belonged to Alfred the Great. Then
stepped in that eternal factor of the letter H, and
it became " Halfrincombe." I wonder if any
contemporary, uncertain in his aspirates, ever
86 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
called the great monarch, " Halfred " ? It is a
fearful thought.
Then the place, having been crowned with an
H, of course those who should have kept the letter,
vulgarly elided it, and the name became Ilfard-
combe," or " Ilfridecombe," and so remained until,
with the introduction of printing, the style became
irrevocably fixed at what it is now.
The town was then nothing more than a few
waterside houses down by the harbour, that
curious, almost pool-like inlet intended by nature
for the purpose, but the place speedily prospered,
chiefly by reason of this natural haven, and in 1346
the port was sufficiently wealthy and populous to
be able to assist Edward the Third with a con-
tingent of six ships and ninety-six seamen, to
help in the French war and the reduction of Calais.
That appears to have been the high-water mark of
Ilfracombe's old-time prosperity, for thenceforward
Barnstaple and Bideford took up the position of
rivals, and wrested away much of its trade.
Little is heard of the town until the beginning
of the Civil War. The sentiment of the townsfolk
was strongly anti-Royalist, and it occurred, there-
fore, to Sir Francis Doddington, a Royalist com-
mander who had helped his cause well at Apple-
dore, that it would be the properest thing to teach
them a lesson while tlie success of his party there
was still fresh, to serve as a moral lesson here.
What happened we may read from a contemporary
account, in the Kingdom's Weekly Intelligencer,
September 3rd. 1644. It is couched something in
'"COMBE" IN HISTORY 87
the sarcastic vein : " At a town called Ilford-combe
in Devonshire, that saint-like Cavalier, Sir Francis
Doddington, set that town on fire, burnt 27 houses
in the town, but was beaten out by the townsmen
and sailors, and lost many of his men."
So the teacher was taught, but the Roundhead
success was not lasting, for, before the end of the
month, Doddington had captured the town,
together with " twenty pieces of ordnance, twenty
barrels of powder, and two hundred stand of arms.
The Royalists then held Ilfracombe until April
1646.
The port continued to decline, and is described
by Blackmore, speaking of the eighteenth century,
in the " Maid of Sker," as " a little place lying in a
hole, and with great rocks all around it, fair enough
to look at, but more easy to fall down than to get
up them " — the laws of gravity being no more
suspended here than elsewhere.
One of the many inlets here deserves particular
note. This is Rapparee Cove, opening out just
beyond the harbour.
Rapparee Cove is known to have borne that
name certainly as far back as 1598, when it appears
to have originated in some obscure connection
with the Earl of Tyrone's rebellion in Ireland,
where the bulk of the rebels were armed with a
species of small pike, called " raparys." North
Devon seems to have been in general a refuge for
the fugitives from Ireland, and Ilfracombe, as a
recognised port for the south of Ireland, to have
been particularly favoured by them. Neighbour-
88 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
ing Combemartin retained until 1837 an odd
reminiscence of that time, suggested, no doubt,
by the refugees. This was an annual pageant,
or merry-making, the hunting of the Earl of
" Rone " ; in which hobby-horses, much rough
music, and a considerable deal of drunkenness
figured.
Rapparee Cove was in 1782 the scene of the
disastrous wreck of a large vessel, variously stated
to have been a prize captured from the Spanish
by Rodney, or a Bristol slave-ship. For long
afterwards, following storms, the beach was a
happy hunting-ground for gold and silver coins,
and for the less desirable relics of the many
drowned, in the shape of skulls and bones.
The entrance to Ilfracombe harbour has been
lighted from the earliest times by a beacon on the
hill overlooking it, called, from that friendly gleam
for the incoming mariner, " Lantern Hill." Whose
care it was, thus to befriend the sailor, we are not
told ; but, from the old-time readiness of the
Church to perform such-like good deeds, and from
the undoubted fact that the building on the hilltop
was once a chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas, it
would seem that those who tended the light were
no mere secular lighthouse men.
Whatever may have been the character of the
old chapel in past ages, the interior is no longer of
any interest, disclosing only a plain whitewashed
room. The time-worn exterior, partly overgrown
with ivy, and the lantern, crowned with a fish for
weather-vane, afford more satisfaction. A light
MODERN 'COMBE
89
is still shown at nights, from the end of September
until the beginning of May.
The harbour, long, like Ilfracombe in general,
the manorial property of the Bourchiers, Earls of
Bath, in succession to the Champernownes, Bon-
villes, Nevilles, and others, and then of the
Bourchier Wreys, now belongs, together with
Lantern Hill, to the Corporation.
IN THE HARBOUR, ILFRACOMBE.
Now let us turn to a consideration of Ilfracombe
to-day. People with a passion for comparisons
and parallels — dear, good people who would trace
a family likeness between an elephant and a
dromedary — seek in conversation to find points
of resemblance between Ilfracombe and (say)
Torquay, Hastings, Brighton ; half-a-dozen other
seaside resorts. They are mostly amateurs at the
art of discovering likenesses where they do not
exist, and may be excused. But there have been
12
90 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
those who in cold print have instituted resem-
blances. For these there is no excuse, acceptance,
or encouragement. Ilfracombe is — just Ilfra-
combe, and not only does Ilfracombe insist upon
its own individuality and declares " I am I," but
every other among the half-dozen naturally de-
mands the like justice.
The nearest parallel is, of course, to be found
in this same county of Devon ; but that is suffi-
ciently remote, geographically, and in most other
ways. A superficial likeness, in its hilly site,
(and in its lack of sands) may be discovered to
Torquay, but that is all. Torquay is in greater part
residential and quietly aristocratic, with a tendency
to pious works and clerical tea-fights : Ilfracombe
is a *' popular resort," and becomes ever more so ;
with what it would be a mere inadequacy to term
a " tendency " to open-air concerts and amuse-
ments for the crowd. We who stay, communing
with nature, elegantly housed in the more refined
hotels of Lynmouth, or the even yet primitive
Clovelly, shudder at the August crowds at Ilfra-
combe, and recount across the dinner-tables, what
time the tender evening closes in upon the quiet
harbour, how we adventured there for half a day
and watched the trippers at their strenuous
tripping. Indeed, those who people Ilfracombe
so numerously in the height of the season go
there determined to have a " good time," and
expend a considerable amount of energy during
the day in securing that desirable consummation ;
but when evening is come they unanimously
MODERN 'COMBE 91
clamour to be amused : hence the entertainments
in the conservatory-hke structure, known officially
as the " Victoria Pavilion," and unofficially and
shamefully as the " Cucumber Frame " ; and
hence also the open-air concerts on the " Monte-
bello Lawn," and elsewhere : " Montebello " being
a name, the most unprejudiced must agree, as
little characteristic of Devon as are the " pierrots,"
who make alleged fun for the aimless crowd. The
days are indeed past when we were " insular."
We have, instead, become more than a thought too
cosmopolitan. Ods bodikins ! " as Sir Richard
Grenville might have said, " beshrew me, but these
things like me not."
The study of seaside " holiday amusements,"
from the time when the sea and the countryside
themselves palled, and the holiday-maker ceased
to be able to amuse himself, might form an inter-
esting theme for the social philosopher. Here we
can but glance at the subject, and slightly trace
the first footsteps of the nigger-minstrel and the
barrel-organist, down to the German bands who ex-
tract unwilling tribute from a long-suffering public,
and the piano-organ men, the immediate pre-
cursors of the " pierrots " aforesaid. It should not
be difficult to become a " pierrot." You procure a
silly suit of white linen clothes, of no particular lit,
that might have been made for a person four times
your own size, whiten your silly face, place on 3^our
idiotic head a foolish sugar-loaf white felt hat, and,
with a garnish of red or black balls, according to
fancy, there you are, plus a little native impudence.
92 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
fully equipped. I do not love the old burnt-cork
nigger minstrel more, I only dislike him less than
this ostensibly French importation that is already
so hackneyed ; but I declare I could welcome the
return of even his extravagant figure, beery breath,
and untutored banjo, by way of relief.
But these are, doubtless, the views of an un-
reasonable recluse. They are not shared by the
holiday crowds, nor by the ruling powers that
control the destinies of Ilfracombe. Entertainers
fill a *' felt want," felt very acutely by the class
of people who most resort to the town in these
days, and the governing body of the town
develops it along these lines of least resistance.
Only, as I stand, when darkness has fallen over
the summer evening, a little aloof, and look
down from some convenient height upon the
garish lights and the blatant merriment, the black
hills seem, to this observer, to frown reproachfully
upon the scene, and the twinkling stars seem like
so many bright tear-drops for the folly of it all.
In short, the romantic natural setting of Ilfracombe
is utterly unsuited to this sort of thing. One may
deplore, yet not resent, it at Yarmouth or at Black-
pool, where Nature is at her tamest, but found
amid the bold rocks and frowning cliffs of North
Devon, one does both. Nor is there any easy
escape anywhere within the town. The bril-
liantly-lighted Pavilion glitters across the lawns,
under the Capstone Hill, and across the interven-
ing space you dimly see, maybe, a jigging figure
within, executing a clog-dance. You may even
MODERN 'COMBE 93
hear the clatter of his clogs, drowned at last in a
very hurricane of applause.
If you remain, you must, perforce, listen to
the celebration of mysterious sprees, in this wise :
{Confidentially)
" I went out on the tiddly-hi.
Oh, fie !
On the sly !
I came home with a head ;
I put me boots in the bed
An' slep' on the mat instead ;
Yus {proudly) I'd bin out on the tiddly-iddly,
twiddly, fiddly, hi, hi, HI, {Crescendo).
''When you've bin out on the tiddly-hi.
Oh, my !
(You try !)
You feel confoundedly cheap, and dry.
' You've bin on the bend,' the guv'nor said,
' You've bin painting it red.'
I'd bin wanting a rise,
But 'e giv me a nasty surprise ; —
For {dolefully, dimiiendo) I got the push instead ;
An' that's the result of goin' out-on-the-blooming —
tiddly, iddly {hut, with returning confidence,
fortissimo) HI, TI-HI."
But, wearying for local colour, rather than for
more of this sort of thing, which, after all, is done
very much better in the London music-halls, you
resort to the harbour. There indeed — if any-
where— you look for something characteristically
Devonian. But even there the streets are brilliant
till late at night with dining-rooms and the like —
94 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
merciful powers, how every one must eat and
drink at Ilfracombe — and the fishermen, if the
samples heard by the present auditor are repre-
sentative, are pre-eminently the foulest-mouthed
to be found on many a varied coast-line.
I know not what the quiet holiday-maker may
find to do at night at Ilfracombe. He may, at
any rate, go to bed, but even there he is pursued
by sounds of revelry. He undresses to the refrain
of tiddly-iddly, diddy-dum-dey, or something
equally intellectual, and his first dreams mingle
with the distant, but distinctly audible,
" I 'card the pitter-patter of 'er feet,
Oh, so neat !
Pitter-patter on the pyvemcnt of the street.
On 'er fyce I tried to look,
An' — good grycious, 'twas the cook! " —
And thus, in the Cockney celebration of mean
intrigue, the melody merges into the mesh of
visions.
What, indeed, shall the lonely visitor to Ilfra-
combe do with himself in the evenings ? He may
wander around the walks of the Capstone Parade
or the Tors, and feel himself reduced to a singular
loneliness amid the amorous couples who there
most do congregate ; or feel not less lonely in
exploring the endless " gardens," " terraces," and
" crescents," where every house is a boarding-
house ; or, in the finer flavour of euphonious avoid-
ance of tlie commonplace truth, " an establishment
for the reception of visitors." There, alas ! he
MODERN 'COMBE 95
feels himself lonely indeed, as, passing the endless
array of lighted rooms with open windows, he
sees the holiday-making families assembled.
But morning in Ilfracombe is more endurable
for such an one.' Bustling, democratic Ilfracombe
has, then, none of that iUuminated vulgarity and
would-be, shop-soiled wickedness that characterise
it overnight. Nature gets her chance again in
the hght of day, and in the long, narrow High
Street you see the crowds in pursuit of natural
enjoyments. Some are shopping, some are making
for the bathing-coves ; others are going on one
or other of the many coaching excursions to
" places of interest in the adjacent country," as
the notices have it. It may be observed that not
yet have motor waggonettes and the like replaced
the coaches and other horsed vehicles at Ilfra-
combe, and that drivers and guards still affect
the traditional red-coats associated of old with
coaching. More than ever are there popular joys
attendant upon one of these coaching-trips to
Berrynarbor, to Combemartin, or Lynton ; for
in these fiercely enterprising times the local
photographers take views, day by day, of the
laden coaches as they prepare to set out ; and so,
at trifling cost, you have a permanent pictorial
voucher as to the way in which you fleeted the
sunny hours at Ilfracombe. Not, by any means,
that all hours are sunny, this especial spot in
North Devon being notoriously rainy ; but it is
at worst but an April-like raininess, and even as
the showers come down, the sun that is to dry
96 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
them up smiles through the watery sky. Thus,
no one minds the " soft weather " of Ilfracombe.
It is many, many years since Charles Kingsley
wrote of Ilfracombe in this manner : "Be sure,
if you are sea-sick or heart-sick, or pocket-sick
either, there is no pleasanter place of cure than
this same Ilfracombe, with quiet nature and its
quiet luxury, its rock fairyland and its sea walks,
its downs and combes, its kind people, and, if
possible, its still kinder climate, which combines
the soft warmth of South Devon with the bracing
freshness of the Welsh mountains." The climate
is the only thing that has not suffered change
since that description was penned. The kind
people are, doubtless, at bottom, as kind as of old
— such of them as are Devonshire folk — but they
are now urban (which, despite the etymology of
the word, does not now indicate what is in these
times understood by " urbanity ") — and to be
urban in these days is to be, colloquially, " on the
make." Ilfracombe, in fact, like any other large
seaside resort, has turned its scenery and its
climate to commercial account, and, as the local
Urban District Council frankly acknowledges,
exists for, and on, the visitor. It is a town of
hotels, lodging-houses, and boarding-houses, few
of whose proprietors can be natives. All the
natural features are exploited, and, lest the visitor
be in doubt what there is to see and do, the
Council has taken in hand the task of placing
notices in prominent places, indicating the things
to be seen and to be done. Thus, kindly shep-
MODERN 'COMBE 97
herded, you lose all personal enterprise, and do,
like an obedient fellow, what you are bidden.
From these official productions you learn instantly
the features of the place, as thus :
" Capstone Parade and Hill. Bands. Free.
Victoria Pavilion. Concerts. Morning and Evening. Free.
Cairn Top. Pleasure Grounds. Free.
Hillsborough Hill Pleasure Grounds. Free.
Hele Bay and Beach. Free.
Chamberscombe and Score Woods. Ideal Picnic Spots. Free."
There are, however, in this list so many things
that, obviously, could not be anything else but
free, that the ordinary stranger stands struck
with astonishment at the moderation which has
not included on the " free " list such items as the
Bristol Channel, the air, and the roads. But
where so many things are trumpeted as " free,"
the suspicious person looks for others that are
not ; and, sure enough, he discovers them, in —
" Pier, and Lantern Hill. Toll, 2d.
Tors Walks. Toll, 2d. "
It is not, of course, the fault of the local
authority that the Tors Walks are subject to toll,
for the place is private property ; but the fact is
especially unfortunate in a place like Ilfracombe,
lacking sands or foreshore, except the one tiny
beach of Wildersmouth Bay.
Nor can you well bathe in the sea without
paying for the " privilege."
The present circumstances of Ilfracombe are
largely conditioned (to use for once a horribly
13
98 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
illegitimate verb) by its nearness to the great
manufacturing and seaport towns of Bristol and
South Wales. Cardiff, Swansea, Barry, are all
within easy reach by steamboat, only twenty
miles across Channel, and the excursion to Ilfra-
combe from all these places is a favourite one.
At any time in the summer, from four to six very
large steamers from these places, lying in the
harbour, form a familiar sight, and the " white
funnel " and the " red funnel " steamers are very
fine, commodious and well-found boats. They
bring an immense concourse of people into the
town, some to stay, but the majority for only a
few hours. Compared, of course, with such
places as Margate or Ramsgate, these numbers
would not be remarkable, but then you have to
remember the difference in the sizes of the respec-
tive places. Margate has a reputation for vul-
garity. All classes resort there, and so they do
here. Ilfracombe has hotels as expensive on
the one hand, or as cheap on the other, as you
could wish, and, I doubt not, there are cultured
visitors to be discovered in them. " Discovered "
is, indeed, precisely the word, for they would
require some seeking amid the mass. It is the
commonest of errors to think vulgarity is the es-
pecial attribute of the poorer, or even of the middle
classes. It is rather a condition of mind than of
pocket, and resides in every social stratum. It
is only the snob who thinks the poor are by
reason of their poverty, vulgar, or the rich, by
favour of their wealth, refined. There are vulgar
MODERN 'COMBE 99
millionaires and cultured crossing-sweepers, for
all the world to see. But the intellectually
vulgar seem to select Ilfracombe, above all places
on the North Devon coast, as their habitat. Ori-
ginally a very delightful place, they are reducing
it to their own level, aided and abetted by the
local building fury, in which landowners are un-
wittingly, in destroying the natural beauties of
the locality, engaged in the antique game of
killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. To
descend from the language of hyperbole, they are
erecting tall terraces of houses on all the outskirts,
with the result, already seen, of shutting out the
views over sea and cliffs ; and with other results,
presently to accrue, that the town will be over-
built and even the vulgarian miss the vanished
rustic graces.
It is amusing to note how antipathetic are
those who resort by choice to Lynmouth and
Clovelly to those others who find in Ilfracombe
everything to satisfy them. To make excursion
from Ilfracombe to Lynton or Clovelly and back
in half a day forms an easy and delightful trip,
but to see those places and look upon them with
an amused and indulgent eye is sufficient for your
typical Ilfracombe visitor. Such an one would
consider it impossible to stay there. I heard such
a critic describe Lynmouth as an 'ole (or was it " a
nole " ?). Geographically, of course, she was cor-
rect, for Lynmouth, by the seashore, is several
hundred feet below the summit of Holiday Hill ;
but of course we all know that a 'ole (or even a
100 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
hole) is more, in this conjunction, than a mere
geographical expression. It was a term of con-
tempt, in this instance, for a place without open-
air concerts and minstrels, a place where you are
reduced to amusing yourself ; a horrible fate when
you find yourself so empty of entertainment to
yourself. Per contra, those who stay by choice at
Clovelly and Lynmouth, and adventure for half
a day to sample Ilfracombe, have been known to
describe it, in their way, as " vulgah." But,
since they cannot stay to see Ilfracombe at night,
if they wish to return that day to the place of their
choice, they cannot know how vulgar it can be.
This is not to say that Ilfracombe has lacked
due recognition. It has been patronised by the
most distinguished, and it is in recognition of this
fact that what was once the " Britannia " Hotel,
down by the harbour, is now nothing less than
the " Royal Britannia."
There are great numbers of amiable, but
characterless, people, who have so little individual-
ity or so much exaggerated loyalty for Royal
personages and reverent respect for the aristo-
cracy, that the well-advertised fact of those bright
and shining ones having visited tliis resort, that,
and the other is sufficient to make the fortune of
those places. Many years ago, the then Prince of
Wales made holiday at Ilfracombe, and the local
guide-books have never allowed visitors to forget
the fact, even although it was when he was a boy.
He went out riding a pony known afterwards to
fame as " Bobby." Alas ! poor Bobby. As the
MODERN 'COMBE loi
guide-books have cleverly discovered, even " the
fact of having carried a Royal personage did not
render Bobby immortal, and his death deprived
Ilfracombe of an attraction to its visitors, and a
large income to its owner." It was a sorry thing
for Bobby that ever he carried a Prince of Wales,
for, ever afterwards, he was condemned to the
drudgery of long, long days carrying the children
of the lower middle (and super-loyal) classes.
To seat little Frankie or little Cissie upon that
sanctified pony was, in some vague way, to come
into touch with the Royal family ; to give him
a carrot was equivalent to (but less expensive
than) presenting a purse to a Princess at a charity
meeting. Bobby was transfigured, like the obj ects
sung by the satirist :
" A clod — a piece of orange-peel —
An end of a cigar —
Once trod on by a princely heel,
How beautiful they are ! "
But the poor animal's glory was hardly earned.
Loyalty, expressed in terms of an unending burden
of children, at last wore him out, and he died.
For a loving list of the great who have visited
the town, you must please to look in those guide-
books for yourselves, but we learn that " no year
passes without some distinguished personage
treading the ground of beautiful Ilfracombe, and
giving another start to a new chapter of the town's
progress as a fashionable resort." That remains
true ; I, myself, was there last year.
102 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
The old parish church has of late been little
altered. It stands high at the west end of the prin-
cipal street, midway between the deeps of the har-
bour and the alpine heights on which the railway
terminus is placed, and its approach is by a steep
flight of stone stairs.
There is something of almost every architec-
tural period in Ilfracombe church, but the work-
manship was ever of so homely a character that
the styles all blend into one rude mass. The tower
ascends in a singular diminishing fashion. In the
large and crowded churchyard you notice most
distinctly, as you are indeed intended to do, a
stone recording no fewer than nine centenarians
who lived and died at Ilfracombe between 1784
and 1897. This by way of advertisement of the
astonishing salubrity of the place ; but an inhabi-
tant, of Brighton chancing this way would be
amused. At Brighton there are generally to be
found half a dozen hale and hearty centenarians.
Odd names are not infrequent ; for example,
" Humphrey Rottenberry," and Ann of the same
name, who died aged 94, and thus nearly became
one of those witnesses to the supreme value of the
Ilfracombe air. Herapaths, too, abound.
The interior of the church is something of an
architectural puzzle, owing to the additions made
in succeeding ages. The grotesque thirteenth-
century stone corbels supporting the waggon-roof
and its array of wooden angels, are particularly
interesting. They form a strange assemblage of
monsters, in which some see only a freakish
THE OLD CHURCH
103
imagination ; but many of them are illustrations
of legends once current in this romantic shire.
Prominent among them are the lean cow, Chiche-
vache, and the well-conditioned cow, Bycorn : the
first in so sorry a condition because her only food.
ILFRACOMBE CHURCH-TOWER.
according to the old story, was good women ; the
second so plump by reason of her diet being ex-
clusively good and long-suffering husbands — ^and
such, we all know, abound.
Among the curious monuments of the Parmyn-
ter family is a tablet with an epitaph little, if any-
104 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
thing, less than blasphemous m modern thought,
to Katherine Parmynter. Of her we read :
" Scarce ever was Innocence and Prudence so lovely : But
had you known her conversation, you would have said she was
the daughter of Eve before she tasted the apple. A servant of
Christ Jesus sought her to wife ; but his master thought
him unworthy, and soe tooke her unto Himself."
With much more to the same effect. This
crown and glory of her sex died in 1660.
The monument of Captain Richard Bowen,
who fell at Teneriffe, in the service of his country,
has a lengthy inscription, which is, however, not
unworthy of being copied here, as a very full-
blown example of the florid patriotic style that
once obtained :
Sacred to the Memory
of Richard Bowen, Esq.,
Captain of His Majesty's Ship, the Terpjichore
This Monument was erected by his afflicted Father.
Of Manners affable and liberal, in private Life :
He was beloved by his Family, and refpected by his Friends
He was generous, humane, and modeft,
And they who knew him beft efteemed him moft
By the vigorous Exertion of fupcrior Abilities
with which Providence had bleft him,
He overcame Difficulties furmountable by no common Powers :
And raifed himfclf to Eminence in a Profeffion where Eminence
is moft difficult.
Amongft diftinguifhed Characters he was himfelf diftinguifhed
In the Service of his King and Country he was faithful, vigilant,
and zealous :
In the Day of Peril he gave Proofs
of the moft daring Intrepidity corrected by the coolest Judgment.
Full of Refources, Spirit, and the moft decifive Activity, he at
once humbled the Foe and faved the Friend.
THE OLD CHURCH 105
The Poft of Danger, to which he was fo often appointed,
unequivocally attefts his fuperior Courage, Abilities, and
Patriotifm,
Of a life thus fpent, and fpending, in the facred Caufe of his
King and Country
The Career was ftopt, in the unfortunate Enterprize at Tenerifife,
(under the Command of Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nehon, K.B.)
where he fell !
Yet full in the Path of his Duty and of Glory,
at the Head of his own Ship's Company ;
on the 24th of July 1797 ; in the 37th Year of his Age.
Of fuch a Man and fuch a Relation it were unjuft to say lefs :
whilft his Friends are foothed by the pleafmg Reflection
that as long as private \Vorth or public Virtue command Refpect
and Veneration,
He will live in tlie Remembrance of his Family
and the Regret of a grateful Country.
. . . Ufque poftera
Crefcet laude recens ...
M
CHAPTER VIII
LUNDY — HISTORY OF THE ISLAND — WRECK OF THE
MONTAGU — LUNDY OFFERED AT AUCTION —
DESCRIPTION
To visit Lundy from Ilfracombe is one of the
favourite excursions with adventurous hohday-
makers. Lundy (no one who has any pretensions
to correctitude speaks of Lundy '* Island " : the
terrninal " y " originally " ey," itself signifying
an isle) lies twenty-three miles to the north-west,
almost mid-way between the coasts of North Devon
and South Wales, where the Atlantic surges meet
the waters of the Bristol Channel. The excursion-
steamers that visit the island frequently in summer
are broad in the beam, of large tonnage, powerfully
engined, and in every way well-found ; but there
are always those among the company who are seen
to be more or less uneasy upon " the sea, the open
sea, the ever fresh, the ever free." These are not
true sons and daughters of Britannia, you think,
as, gazing upon their pallid faces, the story of
how " the captain cried ' heave,' and the passen-
gers all heft," recurs to your reminiscent mind.
But there seems still that spice of original
discovery and exploration of the little-known,
clinging to the trip to Lundy, which impels even
io6
LUNDY
107
J^ortdZijAt^o
ne!-ffccJr
^ennj's (oue^
the worst of sailors to commit himself to the symp-
toms of sea-sickness, for sake of an out-of-the-way
experience : although, to be sure, the trip to the
island is now a commonplace, everyday affair.
Lundy has ever
been a place, if not ^-*^'*-^^-
exactly of mystery, "«*/ ^^..?&</^t
at any rate of the
wildest romantic
doings. It appears
to have been the
" Heraclea Acte " of
the ancients, and is,
in effect, a huge mass
of mingled granite
and slate rock,
nearly three and a
half miles in length,
by about three quar-
ters of a mile broad.
It has nine miles of
rugged and ex-
tremely indented
coastline, here and
there rising in abrupt
cliffs considerably / "
over four hundred
feet high. There is
only one good landing-place ; on the south-east,
where the height of Lamator and the lump of rock
known as " Rat Island," shelter a little curvin
beach from the heavy Atlantic wash.
J,^nai3«>-n.
0>^ li^>ttAt.
g
io8 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
The isle contains 1046 acres, chiefly of barren
upland, covered with rough grass, gorse, heather,
and bracken, and inhabited at the present day by
some thirty-five persons.
Mentioned in the Welsh legends of mystery
and magic, the Mabinogion, Lundy was known to
the Welsh as Caer Sidi. Its present title is due to
Scandinavian settlers, who named it from the
" Lund," or puffin that then, as now, frequented
it in great numbers. The real, as opposed to the
legendary, history of Lundy begins in 1199, when
King John gave it to the Knights Templars. It at
that time belonged to the de Marisco family, and
was, consequently, not really in the king's gift,
but such small considerations as those of private
ownership were very frequently overlooked by the
Norman sovereigns. Moreover, the Mariscos ap-
pear to have been at the time in rebellion against
the Crown. But William de Marisco the then lord,
by no means agreed to this disposal of his island
home, and as the king had merely given it to the
Templars, and had not enforced the surrender
by armed intervention, he succeeded in keeping
possession. He did even more, for he turned pirate,
and was still in undisturbed possession of the place
in 1233. He had a considerable stronghold on
the heights of Lamator, overlooking the landing-
place. The remains of it, stiU known as " Marisco
Castle," are at the present day incorporated with
some cottages and Lloyd's signal-station.
There was wild blood in the Marisco veins. Sir
William, a younger son of this original WiUiam,
HISTORY OF THE ISLAND 109
succeeded ; his elder brother, Sir Geoffrey, having
been slain in a descent upon Ireland in 1234. Sir
William himself was outlawed in the following
year, for murdering an Irish messenger, in
London. Then followed what appears to have
been a trumped-up charge against him of having
conspired to assassinate Henry the Third.
Threatened with the most serious consequences,
William the younger then fled to Lundy, described
as " impregnable from the nature of the place."
The account of his doings then proceeds to tell
how he " attached to himself many outlaws and
malefactors, subsisted by piracies, taking more
especially wine and provisions, and making fre-
quent sudden descents on the adjacent lands,
spoiling and injuring the realm by land and sea,
and native as well as foreign merchants."
During four years the piracies of this desperate
man continued. It does not, however, appear
that he could do otherwise than rob upon the high
seas, and really perhaps he deserves a little sym-
pathy. Falsely accused of plotting to assassinate
the king, he had of necessity to abscond, if he de-
sired to save his life : and once upon Lundy, where
no sufficient sustenance grew, he was further
obliged to help himself from passing vessels. And
having thus, from the mere instinct of self-pre-
servation, become a fugitive and a pirate, he con-
tinued (impelled by the Moorish blood thought
to run in the veins of his race) to follow the trade
of buccaneer from sheer delight in it, and from
merely helping himself to necessaries, descended to
no THE NORTH DEVON COAST
the enormity of seizing whatever he could. It all
sounds like the downward career of a good young
man, as read in religious tracts. First we see him,
son of a turbulent father, with a heritage of bad
blood. Then the mere peccadillo of killing a stray
Irishman — an incident not worthy a moment's
consideration — clouds his fair horizon. No one in
those times would, in the ordinary course of things,
have thought much of that ; but his father's wild
career was doubtless remembered against him,
and he was, as we have already seen, outlawed.
The rest of his descent was easy ; and at last, in
1242, he was captured — how, we are not told —
" thrown into chains, and with sixteen accomplices
condemned and sentenced to die. He was executed
on Tower Hill, with especial ignominy," his body
gibbeted and divided up into small portions, in a
manner which it scarce beseems these pages to
narrate.
Then at last the island was for a time in the
king's hands. But in 1281 Richard the Second
re-granted it to a descendant, and Mariscos ruled
for a while, until Edward the Second granted it to
the elder of his Despenser favourites. Tlie force
and vigour of the once-fierce Marisco family appear
to have been lacking in Herbert, their last known
representative, for he seems not to have opposed
the grant with any determination, and died in
1327 ; the year after the king himself, fleeing from
the plots of his wife and Mortimer, despairingly
considered for a time the project of hiding in this
then almost inaccessible retreat.
HISTORY OF THE ISLAND 113
From that time onward, for a long period,
whoever nominally possessed Lundy, foreign
pirates actually occupied it, attracted by the pros-
pect of rich plunder to be taken out of the ships
sailing up or down Channel, to or from Bristol.
On one occasion, in the time of Henry the Eighth,
the men of Clovelly, greatly daring, fitted out
an expedition and, attacking a company of French
pirates on the isle, burnt their vessels, killed or
made prisoners of them all, and thus freed the
commerce of the Channel for a space.
Not for long, for in 1564 it was found necessary
to direct Sir Peter Cary, " forasmuch as that cost
of Devonshyre and Cornwall is by report mucch
hanted with pyratts and Rovers," to make read}^
one or two ships, for the purpose of suppressing
them. The economical policy of the government,
as shown in these instructions, was to secure that
those thus charged with clearing out this nest of
robbers should be provided with ships and food
only, and should find pay for their labour in what-
ever plunder they could seize : " They must take
ther benefitt of y^ spoyle, and be provijded only
by us of victell." Furthermore, with an even
greater refinement of economy, it was suggested
that " ye sayd Rovers might be entyced, with
hope of our mercy, to apprehend some of the rest
of ther company, which practise we have knowen
doone good long agoo in the lyke."
These canny offers do not seem to have been
eagerly responded to, for it became necessary,
twenty-three years later, for the port of Barnstaple
15
114 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
to fit out an expedition of its own. The town re-
cords show this to have been successful, for items
appear respecting food and drink for prisoners
taken, and for thQ pay of watchmen guarding them.
But any isolated efforts resulted only in tem-
porary relief. The position of Lundy, right in
the track of ships well worth plunder, was too
tempting, and pirates used it as a base until well
on into the eighteenth century. Not only home-
grown pirates, but foreigners, and not only
foreigners, but strange remote people from distant
climes used Lundy for their purposes. Thus in
1625 three Turkish vessels, manned by buc-
caneers, had the impudence to land on the isle, to
carry off the inhabitants as slaves, and even to
overawe Ilfracombe. Three years later French
pirates made a home here, and seem to have been
dislodged only with great trouble. In June i860
it was declared that " Egypt was never more in-
fested with caterpillars than the Channel with
Biscayers. On the 23rd instant there came out
of St. Sebastian twenty sail of sloops ; some
attempted to land on Lundy, but were repulsed
by the inhabitants."
Sir Bernard Grenville, then owner of the isle,
in 1633 recorded the appearance of a Spanish
warship, which landed eighty men, who killed one
Mark Pollard, bound the other inhabitants, and
then, taking everything they could lay hands upon,
departed.
And so forth, in many more incidents of
violence and pillage. In the reign of William
HISTORY OF THE ISLAND 115
and Mary, the French estabUshed a privateering
base here, and snapped up many rich prizes out
of Barnstaple and Bideford. Finally, in 1748,
Thomas Benson, a native of Bideford and a landed
proprietor in that neighbourhood, took a lease of
Lundy from Lord Gower, and, contracting with
the Government to export convicts to Virginia
and the other New England states, landed them
here instead. Among his other activities w^ere
the old industry of piracy and the almost equally
ancient one of smuggling. He must have been
a many-sided person, for he became in 1749
Member of Parliament for Barnstaple, where he
was extremely popular ; having, among other
things, presented the corporation with a large
silver punch-bowl. By some oversight, he forgot
to add a ladle, and this being hinted to him, he
furnished that also, with the inscription on it,
" He that gave the Bowl gave the Ladle." Both
remain cherished possessions of Barnstaple.
What with smuggling, breaking contracts,
and finally scuttling a vessel he had heavily
insured, Benson presently found himself in a
bad way. Excise officers descended upon Lundy,
and discovering a great accumulation of excis-
able articles hidden away in caves, he was fined
£5,000. The vessel he had laden with pewter,
linen, and salt, and over-insured, was bound for
Maryland, but the most part of her freight was
landed on Lundy, and the ship, putting out to
sea again, was burnt by Lancey, the captain.
The crew, who had a hand in it, were betrayed by
ii6 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
one of their own number, and Lancey and a
selection of his ship's company shortly afterwards
dangled from the gibbets of Execution Dock.
Benson, author of the villainy, made away to
Portugal, and in the end died there.
Somewhere about 1780, Lundy was purchased
for £1,200 by Sir John Borlase Warren, who had
the odd fancy of colonising it with Irish. Twenty-
three years later, it commanded only ;f700. In
1834 it passed to Mr. William Heaven. The
value was then £4,500. The present owner, the
Reverend H. G. Heaven, became curate in 1864,
and is now not only rector and proprietor, but
absolute autocratic ruler of the isle. No person,
except pilots, may without his permission go
beyond the beach ; but no instance has been
recorded of the right being exercised and, in
practice, exploring parties go where they please.
Two recent chapters in the history of Lundy
afford interesting reading. The first is dramatic
indeed, being nothing less than the wreck of the
Montagu, first-class battleship, on the Shutter
Rock, at the south-westerly extremity of the
island, at ten minutes past tw^o o'clock on the
foggy morning of May 30th, 1906. The Montagu
was one of a squadron executing manoeuvres in the
West. Coming up Channel, a dense fog shut
down upon the scene and confused the reckoning
of the ship's officers, who, thinking they were
just off Hartland Point, shifted her course into the
fatal proximity of Lundy. In this perilous un-
certainty as to the exact situation of the ship.
WRECK OF THE "MONTAGU" 117
when the captain should, by all the usages of the
service, have been on deck, he was in his cabin ;
and not only the captain, but also the navigating
lieutenant was away from his post, the battleship
being at the time in charge of a junior officer.
Suddenly the Montagu ran on to the sharp pinna-
cles of the Shutter reef, and became immovable ;
THE MONTAGU, ON THE SHUTTER ROCK.
completely impaled upon the rocky spikes, which
thrust right through the thick hull, and into the
engine-room. Thus were the lives of 750 men
imperilled, and a 14,000 ton ship, launched only
so recently as 1903 and costing a million and a
quarter of money, reduced to the value of old iron
and steel. Captain Adair and his navigating
lieutenant were court-martialled and retired from
the service.
Fortunate it was for all on board that a heavy
ii8 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
sea was not running at the time, or all must have
perished. As it happened, the Montagu, although
filled with water, w^as so immovably fixed that
there w^as little danger, and the crew, without much
difiiculty, scaled the cliffs.
The Admiralty at first endeavoured to lighten
the ship by removing the heavy guns and other
tackle. Sister ships stood by while this was done,
and then " camels," i.e. steel tanks filled with
compressed air, were attached to the sides, to raise
her ; but after months of work, it was found use-
less, and the ill-fated ship was at length sold to a
salvage company for a ridiculously low sum. It
is generally understood that the company, working
with a large staff for twelve months in removing
the armour-plating and other valuable parts, have
made enormous profits. In spite of the winter
storms that have raged here since then, the hull
remains as firmly fixed as ever.
Not only the Salvage Company, but the ex-
cursion steamboats also, have benefited largely
by that disastrous error of judgment on a fogg}/
night, for, in the course of two summers, many
thousands of people who might not otherwise
have visited Lundy, have taken the trip to see the
poor, rust-streaked wreck. They land upon the
beach, and, toiling painfully up and over the
rocky spine of the island, come to a grassy clift's-
edge. There, below, lies the Montagu, and up
above they sit, perhaps a couple of hundred of
people, gazing upon the reddened decks, awash
with the waves, until prudence bids them hasten
LUNDY OFFERED AT AUCTION 119
back for the steamer's return. The owners of
the excursion steamers are devoutly hoping the
wreck may last another season. They are not like
the wicked old wreckers of the Cornish coast,
who often went so impiously far as to pray : '' 0
Lord, send us a good wreck ! " but they perhaps
hope that, if any more naval commanders are about
to pile up their ships on the rocks, they may do it
hereabouts, so that, at any rate, some honest
folk may profit.
The ^^ear 1906 also witnessed the attempted
sale of Lundy. It was offered by auction, at
Tokenhouse Yard, on September 25th. The auc-
tioneer was equal to the occasion. He enlarged
upon the unique position of any one fortunate
enough to become possessed of this " little kingdom
for a little king, an empire for a little emperor."
A very little emperor, be it said. He exclaimed :
" no rates, no taxes, no motor-dust," and narrated
how there was no licensing authority, and in short,
complete freedom from the ills the harassed rate-
payer of the unhappy mainland is heir to. How
much for this desirable property ? Ten thousand
pounds bid, for a rent-roll of £630 ? ;£io,5oo, and
so on to £17,000 ; and thenceforward to ;;f 19,000.
" Only £19,000 bid for this httle, tight httle (no,
not tight httle, for there are no public-houses), let
us say ' bright ' little, island ? Why, there is
a fortune waiting in the granite alone ; and a
prospect of the Government some day making
Lundy a naval base !
"All done at £19,000? Gentlemen, I am
120 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
sorry to say the reserve price of ;f 25,000 has not
been reached, and the lot is withdrawn."
And so Lundy up to date remains, as it has
been, in the hoary jokes of over seventy years
past, " the Kingdom of Heaven."
Mr. Heaven's residence stands near by the
landing-place, and the venerable clergyman has
long been a prominent figure, walking down to the
beach occasionally, to gaze upon the people of
the outer world, or to entrust some trustworthy-
looking person with a letter to be posted ; for in
the official course it is only a weekly mail-service
from Instow. The modern church of St. Helena,
built at a cost of £6,500, was completed in 1897 and
is capable of holding the entire population of
Lundy, eight times over. Does an}^ one expect
active colonisation ?
A new lighthouse looks down from Lamator
upon the landing, and lights also the other side,
where the disastrous Shutter Rock lies in wait for
shipping. It is a famous rock, finding mention in
" Westward Ho," as the scene of the wreck of the
Spanish ship, Santa Catherina, when Amyas Leigh
was baulked of his own personal revenge. It stands
up, in pyramidal form, outside the gloomy cleft of
the " Devil's Limekiln," some 370 feet deep. It
is the " shutter " rock because of the popular
belief that, if it could be placed in the " Limekiln,"
it would exactly fit. Outside rises Black Rock.
Near the older lighthouse are the ruins of St.
Helen's chapel, with, beyond it, the heights of
Beacon Hill. Continuing on the western side of
DESCRIPTION 121
the island, we come to the old Signal Battery,
whence guns were fired in misty weather, and so to
Quarter Wall, built by Benson's convicts across
the isle. A number of yawning cracks in the
upland, sloping down to the sea, are observed on
the way to Jenny's Cove. These are called " The
Earthquakes."
" Punchbowl Valley," " The Devil's Chimney,"
and the " Cheeses," indicate the weathered
masses of granite in the little bay. Beyond
these the Halfway Wall goes across the island.
Thenceforward, save for the myriads of sea-
birds, the way is comparatively tame. Except
for a little stream — a curiosity on Lundy — no
striking scenery is met until the North Point and
its modern lighthouse reached, where the cliffs
end in piles of rocks, like ruins, and the Hen
and Chickens islets are scattered about, off-shore.
Here, on most days, the air is filled with the
screaming of the thousands of aquatic birds that
inhabit the crannies of the rocks. Puffins or
" Lundy parrots," cormorants, guillemots, and
gulls fly, or swim and dive, or sit in queer contem-
plative rows upon the reefs, like congregations
at service. Occasionally a seal may be seen
splashing off the seal rocks.
The very ground, sloping to the chffs here-
abouts, is honeycombed with the tunnels in which
the puffins make their nests. The ruins of one
of several ancient round towers, presumably old-
time defences of the isle, are met with on turning
the point and making for the curious pile of rocks
i6
122 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
called the " Mousetrap." A track of marshy
ground here diversifies the scene. Tibbet's Point
rises 510 feet above the sea. Beyond it is the
" Templar Rock," a cliff-profile singularly like
the helmeted face of a man. At this eastern
extremity of the Half-way Wall is a logan-stone
that, owing to the decay of its support, no longer
rocks to a vigorous push. The circuit of the
island is completed on passing the deserted
workings of the Lundy Granite Company and its
empty cottages.
CHAPTER IX
CHAMBERCOMBE AND ITS " HAUNTED HOUSE " —
BERRYNARBOR
The modern suburban extensions of 'Combe are
devouring the rustic lanes far in the rear, and the
natural wildness of Devonian landscape, that
seems so untamable, is being pitifully bridled.
New terraces of cheap houses climbing unimagin-
able steeps, deploy their battalions of " desirable
residences " over the hills : each house with
its pretentious name — " Hatfield," " Blenheim,"
" Burghley," maybe — their sponsors, without
humour themselves, the cause of much satiric
humour in others who chance by them. You
must pass many such on the way to Chambercombe
(originally Champernowne's Combe), one of the
places no visitor to Ilfracombe is bidden to miss
seeing ; Chambercombe being a still rustic valley
where there even yet nestles an ancient farm-
house, formerly a manor-house of a branch of the
Champernowne family, and long enjoying a rather
vague and ineffectual reputation as a " haunted
house."
Suddenly, passing " Champernowne Terrace,"
the uttermost outpost of 'Combe, and a bankrupted
mineral-water factory, you come to the opening of
123
124 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Chambercombe ; a road steeply descending, hollow,
rutty, with tall hedgerow elms — in a word,
Devonian. Down at the bottom, the eye rests
gratefully upon a steep-roofed old whitewashed
building, enclosed within high and thick courtyard
walls, and approached through a gateway : the
old home of those North Devon Champernownes,
extinct, equally with their South Devon name-
sakes of Modbury, long generations ago. For
many years it has been a farmhouse, and in all
this time its uncertain legendary fame has grown,
so that now, by dint of its nearness to the town,
and of the constant stream of curious visitors who
plagued the very life out of the farming folk, the
present occupants have taken Opportunity by both
hands and exploit the legend to commercial ends ;
as the notice, with a generous profusion of capital
letters displayed at the gateway, discloses. Tea
and refreshments may, you read, be obtained, and
even lodgings had, at Chambercombe Farm,
" With its Haunted Room And Coat of Arms
Shown To Visitors."
It is the only instance in which this explorer
has observed ghostly associations so thoroughly
exploited ; but, truth to tell, they are of the
vaguest. When a " ghost story " has many and
diverse variants, you instinctively discredit every
one, and here the versions are many. Most of
them, also, are irreconcilable with the hard,
uncompromising, indisputable facts of building
construction. For example, the most popular
variant, that which tells how, at some period un-
CHAMBERCOMBE
125
named, the farmer discovered by accident the
" haunted room," is wildly wrong in describing
the appearance the house now wears, and has
always worn. According to this precious effort
of a disordered imagination, the farmer was
seated one summer evening in the courtyard, lazily
smoking his pipe and thinking, with the typical
CHAMBERCOMBE.
farmer's usual dissatisfaction upon matters agri-
cultural, while his wife was down at Ilfracombe
(or rather, " down tu' Cume," as we say in these
parts) selling her poultry, butter, and eggs. While
thus occupied, he suddenly bethought him of a
hole in the roof, through which the rain leaked
into his wife's store-room. He had promised her
he would see to it. and. as he went rather in fear
126 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
of his " missus," faced his chair round suddenly
and contemplated seeing to the business before
her return. Now the store-room window was the
only one with a parapet in front, and therefore
easily distinguishable from the other four that
looked down from the roof on to the courtyard.
But now (he had never before thought of counting
them) he totted up five windows. This was odd !
He reckoned up : " Our Sal's bedroom — window
lighting passage — store-room^our bedroom : total
four windows accounted for. What unsuspected
chamber did the fifth light ? He settled that by
calling some half-dozen of his farm-hands. To-
gether, with pick and spade, they entered the house
and ascended the stairs, and commenced operations
on the staircase wall, at a likely spot, where blows
resounded hollow. Soon the cob wall went down
before the onslaught, and presently the farmer and
his men found themselves in a long, low room,
hung with moth-eaten, mouldering tapestry, whose
every thread exhaled the moist rank odour of
forgotten years ; black festoons of ancient cob-
webs in the rattling casement and round the
carved work of the open cornice ; carved oak
chairs, wardrobe, and round table, black too,
and rickety, dust-covered, and worm-eaten ; the
white ashes of a wood fire on a cracked hearth-
stone, and a bed, whose embroidered hangings
were drawn closely around the oaken posts."
The farmer's wife had by this time returned
home, and was seen and heard in the choking dust,
urging her astonished husband, " if he were a
CHAMBERCOMBE
127
man," to " dra' them cuttens." Thus impelled,
he drew them — with a trembling hand, be sure
of that — and there, resting on the bed, was dis-
closed an ancient skeleton. The woman fainted
and her husband carried her out. That night
he saw to it that the mysterious room was again
securely walled up.
This is all very well, as an effort of the imagina-
HAUNTED HOUSE OF CHAMBERCOMBE
tion, but it does not, by any means, bear relation
to the facts of the case. As the accompanying
illustrations of the old farmhouse show, there is
not, nor could there have been, a parapet, and
there are but three windows in the roof. More-
over, the " Haunted Room " — so to style it — is
really only an ancient hiding-hole (and a not
very cleverly constructed hiding-hole either) at
the head of the staircase ; a dark and cramped
128 THE NORTH DEVON" COAST
cranny without a window, and too small ever to
have contained a bed. The next most popular
story is to the effect that the skeleton of some
unhappy foreigner, murdered in long past years by
wreckers, was found here ; but the two most
plausible theories are that this was either a
smugglers' store, or the hiding-place, in an era of
religious persecution, of Roman Catholic recusants.
Near by, but not in any way connected with this
hole, is the so-styled Banqueting Room, anciently
the principal apartment, now a bedroom ; with
coved ceiling, a plaster pendant, and a band of
plaster Renaissance ornament. The shield of
arms of the Champernownes, a lion rampant
within an engrailed bordure, is seen, carved in
stone, over the fireplace. The lower rooms are
stone-flagged, and in one of them they show you
the corner where, according to legend, was the
entrance to an underground passage leading to
Hele Strand, a mile distant ! — the usual pre-
posterous legend. There was possibly a secret
way into the valley at the back, just as there is a
defensible gateway in the front ; for just as the
old lords of Chambercombe felt the necessity for
defence, they also provided for stealthy retreat
when defence should become at last hopeless.
Berrynarbor is one of those easily accessible
places that no visitor to Ilfracombe who claims
to have done his duty can afford to neglect. The
village lies in a valley, three miles away, and,
except for a long stretch of allotment gardens,
making a streak of squalor on the hillside above,
BERRYNARBOR 129
is a very pretty place. Its church, more imposing
than that of 'Combe itself, has been zealously
stripped of much old carving ; but the family
pew of the Bassets of Watermouth, with its fire-
place and comfortable seats, remains to show with
what a degree of comfort the squires, at any rate,
took their devotions.
*
Westcote, so long ago as 1630, recorded the
curious epitaph on one Nicholas Harper, with its
inevitable play upon the name :
Harper, the musique of thy life,
So sweet, so free from jarr or strife.
To crowne thy skill hath raysed thee higher,
And placed thee in angels' quier :
For though that death hath throwen thee down.
In Heaven thou hast thy harp and crowne.
In the chancel is a tablet to the memory of
Mary Westcott, who died in 1648. Some curious
verses compare her to a marigold :
This Mary-gold lo here doth shew
Marie worth gold lies neer below
Cut downe by death, the fair'st gilt flow'r
Flourish and fade doth in an hour.
The Marygold in sunshine spread
(When cloudie) clos'd doth bow the head
This orient plant retains the guise
With splendid Sol to set and rise
Even so, this Virgin Marie rose
In life soon nipt, in death fresh growes
With Christ her Lord shall rise againe
When shee shall shine more bright by farre
Than any twinkling radiant starre
For be assur'd that by death's dart
Mary enjoys the better part.
17
130 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
An anagram follows, in this wise :
Marie Westcott
Mors evicta tuia,
and the representation of a yellow marigold con-
cludes the curious monument. Not the least
curious part of it is the fact that these verses do
not commemorate a girl who died untimely, but
a spinster aged seventy.
The old farmhouse of Bowden, where Bishop
Jewell, the apologist of the Anglican Church, was
born in 1522, remains. His defence of the newly
established church was at the time thought so
admirable that it was directed by the Government
of Queen Elizabeth to be chained in the parish
churches of the kingdom.
CHAPTER X
LEE — MORTE POINT — MORTHOE AND THE TRACY
LEGEND — WOOLACOMBE — GEORGEHAM —
CROYDE — SAUNTON SANDS — BRAUNTON,
BRAUNTON BURROWS, AND LIGHTHOUSE
The way out of Ilfracombe to Lee, for the pedes-
trian, is through the Tors Walks, and so by clearly
defined cliff paths for two miles. The carriage
road leads past Ilfracombe parish church, and,
turning to the right, goes up hill to Slade. Finally,
having climbed to an extravagant height, it
plunges alarmingly down, and still down, steep
and winding, through a luxuriant valley, where
you encounter the hot steamy air, like entering a
conservatory. Fuchsias in full-bloom take the
place in the hedgerows generally occupied by
privet, thorn, or blackberry-bramble, for this is
the locally famed " Valley of Fuchsias," where
frost comes rarely and the keenest winds are
robbed of their sting. At the foot of this descent,
the village of Lee is gradually disclosed ; a graceful
little Early English Church, built in 1836, the old
Post Office, where visitors do most resort for tea,
a few clusters of cottages, and then the sea,
furiously rushing into a little rocky bay, or calmly
lapping among the rocks, or retired at low tide,
131
132 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
leaving exposed a thick bed of seaweed that sends
up a strong bracing scent ; all according to the
mood and circumstances of the moment. A
strikingly handsome hotel — the " Manor Hotel,"
standing amid lawns and gardens, for it was once
the manor-house — occupies the middle of the tiny
bay, and is the resort of those who like to be within
easy reach of Ilfracombe, and 5/et out of its ex-
uberant life ; and that is all there is of Lee. The
coastguard path clambers round to Bull Point
lighthouse, and there is a steep and rocky, but
hopeful-looking, lane on the left which promises
a short cut for the stray cyclist to Morthoe.
Appearances are deceptive, and, quite a long way
up hill, the lane ends and the aggrieved stranger
finds himself in an almost trackless succession of
fields of oats. Negotiating these with what
patience he may, and floundering through the
fearsome mud of the two farmyards (Heaven send
it be not wet weather !) of Warcombe and Damage
Bartons, he comes at length to a road, which, to
his dismay, he finds is a private road to Bull Point
lighthouse. From it there is no exit towards
Morthoe save through a formidable padlocked gate
eight feet high, but a notice (on the outer side of
the gate only, and therefore likely to be overlooked
by the raging cyclist within) directs those who
want to drive or ride to the lighthouse to call for
the keys at a neighbouring cottage. As for the
lighthouse, it is own brotlier to dozens of other
modern structures of the kind, and was built in
1874. It was built especially to guard against the
MORTE POINT 133
dangers of Morte Point, and in addition to its
occulting light has a lower fixed red beacon on the
west, to mark the position of Morte Stone. A
reef-strewn indentation, known as Rockham Bay,
separates this spot from Morte Point.
Morte Point does not impress me, and although
I have every wish to '* write if up " to its grim
name — as every journalist who properly under-
stood what is expected of him would most as-
suredly do — I cannot see the grimness of it ; only
a projecting tongue of land that runs down to
the sea and ends in low, insignificant cliffs, with a
chaotic scatter of formless rocks projecting from
the waves, and the " Morte Stone," rather larger
than the others, seaward. And there are, you
know, squalid little gardens of the allotment type
in the fields, and Morthoe village itself is so
commonplace that the tragical names, " Death
Point," " The Hill of Death," seem absurdly mis-
applied. But Morte Point is a great deal more
deadly than it looks, and although the landsman
who sees with his own vision, rather than at second
hand, may slight the name, seafaring men dread
it more than the really magnificent spectacular
bulk of Hartland Point. It is not the size, but
the awkward situation, of Morte Point, together
with the currents which set about it, that make
it dangerous to shipping. The removal of Morte
Point is, naturally enough, beyond the powers of
man, but it should at any rate, in these days of
high explosives and engineering skill, not be im-
possible to abolish the isolated rock of Morte
134 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Stone, in spite of the ancient sardonic jest that
the only person to remove it will be the man who
can rule his wife.
Morthoe (locally " Morte ") village is a wan,
desolate-looking collection of a few houses on the
cliff-top, overlooking the wide expanse of blue sea
and yellow sands of Woolacombe Bay. It can
never have worn anything but a stern, stark,
weather-beaten appearance, but that is giving way
in these times to something even less attractive ;
commonplace plaster-fronted houses, that would
not pass muster in even one of the less desirable
London suburbs, having sprung up around the
ancient weatherworn church, while a grocer's shop,
styling itself " stores," looks on to the churchyard.
At a place named so tragically " Morthoe," you do
most ardently demand that the scene be set some-
what in accordance with the ominous name. The
stranger does not insist upon a mortuary full of
shipwrecked sailors, as (so to say) a guarantee of
good faith, but he does resent, most emphatically,
the sheer commonplace that dashes his anticipa-
tions remorselessly to extinction.
The ancient family of Tracy, associated closely
with Barnstaple, and with many another locality
in North and Mid Devon, are mentioned in
histories of the neighbourhood as early as the
beginning of the twelfth century. Ever after the
murder of Thomas a Becket in 1170, in which
William de Tracy bore a part, the Tracys were
said, in the wild legends of old, to have always
" the wind in their faces." The belief provided
MORTHOE AND TRACY LEGEND 135
a rough rhyme, and satisfied a queer idea of re-
tributive justice by which root and branch ahke
of that unfortunate family suffered for the acts of
one who it appears was not himself, after all, of
that race : having been a de Sudeley by birth, and
only assuming the name of Tracy after his mar-
riage with Grace, daughter of Sir William de Tracy,
The legends that have gathered like the incrusta-
tion on old port-wine bottles, round the assassina-
liPljjiuitimujlwt^^
MORTHOE.
tion of Becket and the after-history of the four
knights who murdered him, tell how Tracy fled to
Morthoe and passed the rest of his life in prayers
and penitence, but it seems to be fully established
that he fled the country and died three years
later, in Calabria ; after having, according to a
yet further variant, thrice unsuccessfully at-
tempted to make pious pilgrimage to the Holy
Land, and being beaten back on every occasion
by adverse winds.
The legend associating the assassin with
136 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Morthoe would appear to have been invented to
account for the ancient altar-tomb, covered with
an inscribed slab of black marble, bearing the
name of one William de Tracy, that still stands
in the south chapel of the old church. There was
not, in the days when this tale originated, the
disposition to criticise any story that imaginative
persons might choose to tell. Research, for the
purpose of recovering facts obscured by lapse of
time, was unthinkable in the days when travel to
the repositories of learning could be undertaken
only at great risks and incredible cost ; and so,
what with both the will and the power wanting
to arrive at mere facts, many an incredible tale
has been started on its career. It seems, in this
instance, never to have occurred to the people of
Morthoe, who long accepted this story, that among
the numerous Tracys with whom they were in old
times surrounded, there must have been more
than one William. William, indeed, appears to
have been a favourite name among them. In
short, the man whose tomb remains here was a
Tracy who from 1257 to 1322 was rector of
Morthoe. He thus died close upon a hundred
and fifty years later than Becket's assailant.
Remains of the incised figure of a priest are yet
traceable on the tomb, together with an inscription
which has been deciphered, '* Syre Guillaume de
Tracy, gist ici. Dieu de son alme eyt merci."
The interior of the tomb was rifled long ago. In
the quaint description by old Westcote, who wrote
in 1620, " He rested in ease until some ill-affected
MORTHOE AND TRACY LEGEND 137
persons, seeking for treasure, but disappointed
thereof, stole the leaden sheets he lay in, leaving
him in danger to take cold."
This Early English church with aisleless nave
and two chapels, has few other memorials, none of
them ancient ; but many of the old carved bench-
ends remain, the balance of them being imitations,
carved locally, when the church was restored in
1857. ^1^ recent years the east windows of chancel
and north and south chapels have been filled with
beautiful stained glass, designed by Henry Holiday,
and the space above the chancel-arch decorated
in gold and coloured mosaic, with four stiffly
decorative angels in the Burne-Jones convention,
by Selwyn Image. The dangers of Morthoe, not
only to seafaring folk, but also to bathers, appear
in the memorial window to Thomas Lee, architect,
of Barnstaple, who was drowned off Barricane
Beach in 1834. The memorial of a more recent
tragedy is seen in the churchyard, where a tomb-
stone records the drowning of " Winifred, youngest
daughter of Sir Walter Forster, M.P., who was
swept away by the treacherous ground-swell,
while bathing in Coombes Gate, Morthoe, Aug. 14,
1898, aged 21." Near by is a rhymed epitaph
upon one '' Albion Bale Harris, aged 13," who was
killed in 1886 by falling off a cliff at Ilfracombe.
The long, steep road that descends from
Morthoe to the flat shore of Woolacombe Bay, is
becoming plagued with a growth of tasteless
lodging-houses, whose neutral-tinted stucco is put
to shame by the splendour of sea, sky, and sands.
18
138 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
When last I came this way, two Itahan piano
organists, with a cage of canaries, were grinding
out their mechanical music-mongery in an excep-
tionally lone spot, away from those new houses ;
wasting, like the flowers in the wilderness, their
sweetness on the desert air. None but the rocks
heard them, for not another living soul was near.
They were not drunk, neither did they appear to
be mad. I have not yet discovered the true in-
wardness of it ; is it possible that here at last
were two artists, for Art's sake, piano-organing
for the very love of it? Dark doubts cloud the
idyllic picture !
Below the road, before you come to Woola-
combe Bay, is the little inlet of Barricane Beach,
shut in between two projecting reefs. Charles
Kingsley, many years ago, writing of Woolacombe
Sands, referred to them as really composed of
shells, but it would seem that Barricane Beach
alone can claim his remarks :
" Every gully and creek there among the rocks
is yellow, but not with sand. Those are shells ;
the sweepings of the ocean bed for miles around,
piled there, miUions upon millions, yards deep, in
every stage of destruction. There they lie, grind-
ing to dust, and every gale brings in fresh myriads
from the inexhaustible sea-world. The brain
grows dizzy and tired, as one's feet crunch over
the endless variety of their forms — and then one
recollects that every one of them has been a living
thing — a whole history of birth, and growth, and
propagation, and death."
WOOLACOMBE 139
The little inlet, so shut in, has an exclusive air,
in contrast with the open semicircular three-
miles sweep of Woolacombe Sands ; but refresh-
ment caterers have descended upon the place with
tents. They have done the hke at Woolacombe
Bay itself, for in these days Woolacombe Bay is
a name denoting more than an expanse of water
with a sandy fringe. The safe bathing in the sea,
and the extensive golfing on the sand hills or in the
flat fields have converted what was, literally, a
'' howling waste " — for the winds occasionally
blow great guns here — into the semblance of a
seaside resort. There were, but a few years ago,
only some three houses here, including the old
manor mill, whose water-wheel formed a pic-
turesque object beside the little stream that
empties itself into the bay ; but now there is a
great red brick hotel with the usual " special
terms to golfers," and a little red town has sprung
up around it, with a fringe of rather blear-eyed
shops facing the sea, and some better, turned at
right angles to it. There is so impossible a look
about the whole thing, that " here we have no
abiding place " is a quotation that rises promptly
to the mind of the observer. It looks, with its
refreshment booths and array of chairs on the
shore in summer, like some camp-meeting in a
desolate part of America. But it is intended to
last ; a permanent water-supply has been installed
and a kind of modern missionary tin church,
dedicated to St. Sabinus, who voyaged across from
Ireland a thousand years ago, to convert the
140 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
heathen of this neighbourhood — and was wrecked
on this shore — has been erected. Woolacombe
Bay, however, is a melancholy place. It has had
no past, and it is difficult to imagine it with a
future. Only a fanatical golfer to whom the
world beyond his putting-greens and his bunkers is
merely incidental, could long find occupation here.
That is a terrible road — preposterously steep,
deep in loose sand, and strewn with large stones —
which leads up from this resort in the making to
the high table-land down on whose other side lies
the village of Georgeham, whose inhabitants, quite
exceptionally, insist upon it being styled, not
" Georg'm," but emphatically " Georgham."
That is their pronunciation, and they bid you use
none other. In the fine, but rebuilt church, is
the cross-legged effigy of an ancient St. Aubyn —
one Sir Mauger of that ilk, who died in 1293 — and
an ugly and greatly-decayed monument of the
Chichesters, with medallion-portraits of many
seventeenth-century bearers of that name. In
the churchyard, where the humbler sleep just as
comfortably, is the epitaph of Simon Gould and
his wife Julian, who died in 1817, after seventy-five
years of married life, each aged 107, and near by
may still be found a stone to one William Kidman,
who, with all his mates, was drowned in the wreck
of H.M.S. Weazel, guardship stationed off Apple-
dore, at Baggy Point, in February 1799. An
epitaph upon Sergeant Job HiU, of the 40th Foot,
completes this list of interesting relics, on a
martial note :
CROYDE 141
Nor cannon's roar nor rifle shot
Can wake him in this peaceful spot.
With faith in Christ and trust in God,
The sergeant sleeps beneath this clod.
Leafy lanes and rugged lead to the hamlet of
Putsborough, very much removed from the snares
and pitfalls of the world of affairs, and on the road
to nowhere at all, unless it be the rocks of Baggy
Point, which forms the southern horn of Morte
Bay. Putsborough takes its name from some
Saxon earl, just as Croyde derives its own from
Crida ; and doubtless it was to convert the people
of Putta and Crida, or their descendants, from
the fierce heathen rites of the Saxons, that St.
Sabinus, St. Brannock, and many another Irish
missionary landed in the long ago on these shores.
Putsborough lies embedded in leafy seclusion.
A farmstead or two, and their attendant cottages,
together with a most delightful thatched manor-
house, overhung with tall trees, comprise the whole
place. The manor-house and its lawn and garden
stand whimsically islanded by surrounding roads,
and a little stream trickles by, in a water splash.
It is a most primitive place and some of the lanes
leading on to Croyde are fit fellows with it, being
cut deeply into the rock and overhung, ten feet
high, with brambly growths.
Croyde is not so entirely removed from social
intercourse. It is still a pretty, scattered rustic
village lining a road running down a valley to the
sea, with a brawling stream beside the road ; but
on the shore of Croyde Bay, where there are
142 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
yellow sands, some recent seaside houses have
been built. It is a pretty and cheerful little bay ;
not large enough to look melancholy and desolate,
like that of Woolacombe, and the road on to
Saunton is excellent ; having really been remade
across Saunton Down, as part of a " develop-
ment " scheme. Excellent, that is to say, from
the point of view of a motorist, for it is broad and
straight, and the surface is beyond reproach. But
it is, it must be added, more than a trifle bald
and uninteresting to those who do not regard
roads as the nearer perfection the more closely
they resemble a race-track.
Whether Saunton be " sand-town " or whether
it was originally named " Sainct tun," — as, in
some sort, a holy district— is still a vexed ques-
tion ; and likely to remain undecided, for these
shores are remarkable both for saints and sands.
We have already told briefly how St. Sabine — or
Suibine, as he was known in Ireland — landed in
disorder on Woolacombe sands in the dim past.
Here were chapels of Saint Sylvester, Saint
Michael, and Saint Helen ; and here St. Brannock
came ashore in a.d. 300, to convert the heathen,
and incidentally to found the church called after
him at what is now Braunton, in " Brannock's-
town." More of him anon. But legends tell how
he built his early church of timber cut in forests
by the seashore, and dragged inland by harnessed
stags. Where, it has been asked, did these forests
stand ? No one knows where legend begins and
fact ends ; but it is certain that underneath these
SAUNTON SANDS 143
miles of blown sand, on to Braunton Burrows,
and again at Northam Burrows and on to West-
ward Ho, there lie the remains of a prehistoric
forest, overwhelmed by sea and sand, or in some
ancient subsidence, many centuries ago.
There is no town at Saunton, and the mere
fringe of houses beside the road is very new ;
this coast having been of old too dreary and in-
hospitable to afford a home for honest folk.
Smugglers, wreckers, and such shy cattle, were
among its scanty frequenters, and sometimes (the
place being so lonely and secretive) refugees
landed amid these wastes. Among them was the
Duke of Ripperda, who landed one dark night
in the beginning of October 1728, out of an Irisli
barque. He " had no one with him but the lady
who had procured his deliverance, the corporal
of the guard, and one servant." This fugitive
had escaped from the castle of Segovia. He was
entertained the night by one " Mr. Harris of
Pickwell," and then went to Exeter. Thus the
Duke of Ripperda, who is no national concern
of ours, flits mysteriously across country to dis-
appear again in foreign parts. It would puzzle
a biographer to give him a domicile. Born a
Dutchman, he seems to have been sent on a
diplomatic mission to Madrid, and there to have
renounced Holland and the Protestant religion
and to have become a Spaniard and a Catholic.
Philip the Fifth rewarded him with a dukedom.
Eventually he is found in Morocco, as a Moorish
subject of the deepest dye. At one period, we
144 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
are told, he became a Jew, but that is scarcely
credible. At last, having been everything it was
possible to be, he died in 1737.
Old rotting ribs of wrecked ships, protruding
like fangs from the wet margin of the sands,, tell
their own tale of unexpected and disastrous land-
falls on the lonely shore.
On the left hand of the road is still to be seen
" Saunton Court," an old farmhouse mentioned
with glowing description in Blackmore's " Maid of
Sker," but the interest of the house in the novel is
not reflected in the present circumstances of the
place.
The road leads directly into Braunton ; a
large, sprawling village of cob-walled, white-
washed cottages ; a place that has, so far, not been
affected in the slightest degree by modern change.
What Braunton was a hundred years ago, it
remains to-day. Risdon, in " Survey of Devon,"
1630, says : " Brannockston, so named of St.
Brannock, the king's son of Calabria, that lived
in this vale, and 300 years after Christ began
to preach His holy name in this desolate place,
then overspread with brakes and woods ; out
of which desert, now named the Boroughs (to tell
you some of the marvels of this man), he took
harts, which meekly obeyed the yoke, and made
them a plow to draw timber thence, to build a
church. I forbear to speak of his cow, his staff,
his oak, his well, and his servant Abel, all of which
are lively represented in that church, than which
you shall see few fairer." Brannock' s cow is
BRAUNTON 145
really well worth speaking of ; for, after it had
been killed and carved into joints, the pieces re-
united at the word of the saint, and the animal,
restored to life, began to quietly graze in the
meadows, as though nothing had happened. That,
at any rate, is the legend. A legend that demands
faith of a character not quite so robust is that of
the vision which led Brannock to build his church
here. In a dream he was shown a sow and her
litter, and directed to select the spot where next
day he should find the sow. A carved boss in
the roof of the church represents the pig and her
family, and St. Brannock himself, with his cow, is
carved boldly on one of the old bench-ends.
It is a remarkable church, inside and out ;
with tower and lead-sheathed spire out of the
perpendicular. Most of the old carved oak bench-
ends, dated about 1500, remain, decorated with
a large number of devices ; among them, not only
St. Brannock and his cow, but a bishop with his
crozier ; the head of St. John Baptist held up by
the hair ; Judas's thirty pieces of silver, and
Master John Schorne, the charlatan rector of
North Marston, Buckinghamshire, late in the
thirteenth century, who imposed upon the credu-
lous folk of that age by pretending to have conj ured
the devil into a boot. To convince the most
sceptical by ocular demonstration, he contrived
a mechanical impish-looking figure, fastened on
a spring at the bottom of a long boot, of the kind
worn by hunting-men. When the spring was
released, the imp would fly up to the edge of the
19
146
THE NORTH DEVON COAST
boot, in what was in those times, you know, a
really terrifying manner. The good Master
Schorne, however, had him well under control,
and, as so powerful a devil-compeller, was natur-
ally feared and respected. He was further revered
as a certain exorciser of the ague. Schorne and
his devil in a boot are the
originators of the children's
toy, " Jack-in-the-Box " ; for
to that complexion did his
supernatural terrors come at
last, when the springs that ac-
tuated the jumping imp were
laid bare.
But Schorne was in his day,
and for long after, something
very nearly like a saint, in
popular estimation, and is in-
deed sometimes represented fully
furnished with the saintly nim-
bus. Pictures, or carved effigies,
of him are extremely rare, for
there are probably not more
than six or seven in England. Here, no doubt,
through some confused version of the legend, the
carver has shown him holding what appears to be
a cup, instead of a boot.
Braunton church is full of old pieces of carved
woodwork, notably the Jacobean gallery in the
north chapel, and the churchwardens' pew, dated
1632. In the south chapel stands a richly de-
corated Spanish chest with undecipherable in-
SIR JOHN SCHORNE
AND HIS DEVIL.
BRAUNTON BURROWS 149
scription ; and another relic of the wreck of
H.M.S. Weazel m 1799, a tablet to the memory
of William Gray, surgeon of the ship, one of the
one hundred and six who lost their lives on that
occasion.
A prominent church-like tower, standing on
the crest of a tall hill east of the church, and by
the site of a hilltop chapel of St. Michael, is less
ecclesiastical than it looks, being in fact a political
monument commemorating the passing of the
Reform Bill in 1832.
Braunton Burrows are best explored by setting
forth from Braunton village as for Barnstaple ;
but, when some little distance out, turning to the
right, over the Vellator railway crossing, and the
little river, or creek, called the Caen. Thence-
forward, the way is clear enough for those who
are content to follow the creek to its junction
with the estuary of the Taw, and so along the
sands, past the ship that forms the port of Barn-
staple hospital, to the lighthouse. But the true
inwardness of the Burrows is only to be found by
continuing straight on past the level crossing,
and so into a lane that finally turns to the left
and then loses itself in loose sand.
There is a world of desolation in Braunton
Burrows, and he who would thus come, overland,
to the queer lighthouse that is perched at the
seaward end of the estuary of the river Taw, must
needs quest doubtfully and with some physical
discomfort, before reaching that point where the
waste of shifting sand slopes down to the waves.
150 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Just as no one becomes irreclaimably wicked in
one plunge, but descends irretrievably by a series
of slight moral lapses, so does the unwary traveller
come by degrees into the baffling sand-wreaths of
the Burrows. A good riverside road from Braun-
ton village by degrees becomes an indifferent
road ; then, ceasing to be a road of any kind,
becomes a more and more sandy lane, which, in
its turn, insensibly degenerates to a track, and —
BRAUNTON BURROWS.
there you are ! You must not, however, imagine
this sandy waste to be without its own pecuhar
beauties, or barren of vegetation. The winds
have blown the immense accumulation of shifting
sand into fantastic hummocks and weird hollows,
where the dry surface is ribbed by their eddies,
just as the retreating tide ribs the wet sand of the
shore ; but here and there coarse grasses have
taken root and achieved the seemingly impossible
task of anchoring the elusive substance : crown-
ing the ridges with a wan growth ; and in some
BRAUNTON BURROWS 151
sheltered hollows, where the wind comes scourmg
with less insistence, there are nurseries of pretty
wild flowers which, although the unskilled ex-
plorer knows it not, are botanical treasures, some
of them sought almost vainly elsewhere. Mats
and patches of candytuft form exquisite carpet-
ings, the wild pansy blooms abundantly, and in
July, beautiful above all else, the intense blue of
borage competes vigorously with the yellow-
brown of the sand. It has been affirmed that
eight hundred varieties of wild flowers are found
here, including the rare Asperugo procumhens
and Teticrium scordmm ; while near the quaint
lighthouse the curious will discover the mud-rush
(Isolepis holoschcenus), and a bad smell.
Near the lighthouse ! There's the rub. To
reach that goal is a matter of considerable diffi-
culty ; for, amid the labyrinth of hillocks and
dales of sand, it cannot be seen afar off, and to
come to it in anything like a straight course is,
therefore, impossible, I know not which, among
the inevitably uncomfortable and arduous cir-
cumstances of this enterprise, is the most dis-
tressing time. To wander here in rain, or in the
bitter blast, must certainly be terrible ; but no
less terrible, in its own particular way, is it to
explore this wilderness on some blazing hot day
of August. The hollows are stifling, the sand
everywhere soft and yielding, and in unexpected
places lurk those " pockets," or holes filled with
yet more yielding sand, that, equally with the
rabbit-runs, give the place the name of " Burrows."
152 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Into these unsuspected places you may easily
sink suddenly up to the knee of one leg, while the
other remains on the surface. This sandy waste
is, therefore, not without its dangers.
The lighthouse that guides mariners safely
into the Taw — or " Barnstaple River," as sailors
prefer to call it — is an odd structure ; not so
ferociously ugly as every writer who has mentioned
it would lead the stranger to believe. It has
character. No one, for instance, would be in the
least likely to confuse it with any other lighthouse ;
and that is a great point. Nowadays, when the
Trinity House builds a new lighthouse, it is as
exactly like the last in general appearance as that
was like its predecessor. Now Braunton light-
house is a very old affair, that came into being
when a considerable amount of individuality sur-
vived. It stands here, sturdily performing in its
secular way what the neighbouring St. Ann's
Chapel did for sailors as a religious duty, long,
long ago. Some few scanty remains of that little
oratory and lighthouse combined were to be
found, some years since, but they have now dis-
appeared. The chapel measured fourteen feet six
inches, by twelve feet. Neighbouring farmers
requisitioned its stones so freely that what was
left, even a century ago, was little more than a
ground-plan.
The existing lighthouse looks like the design
of some one who set out to build an ordinary,
four-square dwelling, and then conceived the idea
of placing a tower on its roof ; and this tower,
BRAUNTON LIGHTHOUSE
153
tapering towards the lantern and carefully hung
with slates, is strongly shored up with metal-
sheathed timbers, lest the stormy winds that blow
pretty constantly in winter overturn it. The
lighthouse-man, who spends his summer days
gasping for air on the shady side, holds the infre-
quent stranger in converse as long as possible,
and does not appear altogether contented with his
existence on a spot where, he says, you cannot
bear to sit down on the sands in summer, for the
BRAUNTON LIGHTHOUSE.
heat, which is strong enough to almost scorch
your breeks, to say nothing of your person, and
in winter dare hardly put your nose out o' doors,
on account of the cold. He will illustrate for you
the especial dangers of this point, against which
the lighthouse is placed here to guard, and will
explain that, on account of the shifting, sandy
bar of the river, there are two lights provided :
the fixed one on his tower, and another, low down,
on a movable white- and black-striped box on rails.
This is moved backwards and forwards, according
20
154 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
to the movement of the bar, so that ships entermg
the river and keeping their course safely, shall
get the two lights aligned.
The way between Braunton and the approach
to Barnstaple, at Pilton, is uninteresting. The
road runs for the most part out of sight of the
river and the sea. Only one thing attracts the
wayfarer's attention ; and that for its singularity,
rather than for any intrinsic beauty. This ob-
ject, beside the road, and so close to it that the
wayfarer cannot fail to notice the queer, would-be
Gothic battlements, is Heanton Court, now a
farmhouse ; the " Narnton Court " of Blackmore's
" Maid of Sker."
CHAPTER XI
PILTON — BARNSTAPLE BRIDGE — OLD COUNTRY
WAYS — BARUM — HISTORY AND COMMERCIAL
IMPORTANCE — OLD HOUSES — " SEVEN BRETH-
REN BANK " — FREMINGTON — INSTOW AND
THE LOVELY TORRIDGE
Barnstaple is heralded by its suburb, Pilton, on
a creek (or " pill " as the word is here) of the river
Yeo. The people of Pilton, who were among the
earhest to manufacture cotton fabrics in a district
that made only woollens, were in the early part
of the seventeenth century looked upon in much
the same way as the makers of base coin are re-
garded. " Woe unto ye, Piltonians," exclaimed
Westcote (1620), " who make cloth without
wool ! "
The churchyard of Pilton is entered in a sin-
gular manner, under an archway between alms-
houses. Here stood Pilton Priory, said to have
been founded by Athelstan so early as the tenth
century. Of that, however, there are no traces.
The church, a very fine and interesting building,
is largely Perpendicular. A curious and well-
preserved grinning head with jester's cap forms
a stop to one of the window hood-mouldings, and
a tablet over the south porch, now somewhat
15s
156 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
illegible, refers to "... late unhappy wars.
Anno Dom. 1646," and proceeds to record that it,
or the tower, was rebuilt in 1696. The
church, in fact, was injured during
the operations attending the various
takings and retakings of Barnstaple
by Roundheads and Royalists. A
long metrical epitaph will be observed
in the churchyard, to John Hayne,
d. 1797, aged forty, huntsman and
T H F T 1'" S T E R ' S
HEAD. servant for twenty-five years to William
Barber, of Fremington.
The interior of the church is very beautiful.
A fine fourteenth-century oak screen divides nave
and chancel, and the font is surmounted by a
sixteenth-century canopy, said to have formerly
been the canopy of the Prior of Pilton's chair. On
one side is the staple to which the Bible was once
chained. Among the relics in the church is an
old pitch-pipe for the choir. But the most sin-
gular thing is the Jacobean hour-glass for the
pulpit, held out by a projecting arm fashioned
in sheet-iron and painted white. This fantastic
object has acquired a very considerable celebrity
in these days when every other tourist carries a
photographic camera and hunts diligently for
pictorial curiosities. The vicar and church-
wardens of Pilton are also up-to-date, for they
charge sixpence for the privilege of ])hotographing
the hour-glass and pulpit : and see they get it.
Barnstaple is built along the north bank of
the Taw estuary, at a point where it suddenly
BARNSTAPLE BRIDGE
157
contracts, and where the river Yeo falls into it.
In the tremendous language of the briefs sent out
broadcast in the reign of Henry the Eighth, so-
liciting alms for the repair of Barnstaple bridge,
crossing the estuary, the river is described as a
" great, hugy, mighty
perylous and dreadfuU
water, whereas s a 1 1 e
water doth ebbe and
flow foure tymes in the
day and night." This
was " piling on the
agony" with a vengeance:
a prodigious swashing
about with sounding ad-
jectives that seems to
the modern traveller
singularly overdone.
Barnstaple, it is quite
evident by this appeal
for aid, had not yet ar-
rived upon the threshold
of that era of abounding
prosperity which was so
soon to come. In a few
years more the town
was well able to main-
tain its bridge, but in the
meanwhile had to beg through the land ! It was
a very old bridge, even then, and incorporated
portions built so early as the thirteenth century.
There were then thirteen arches, three being added
PULPIT AND HOUR-GLASS,
PILTON.
158 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
later ; but even so late as 1796 it remained so
narrow that the roadway was scarcely practicable
for wheeled traffic. It was, in short, little other
than a pack-horse bridge in all those centuries.
There was then no space left for foot-passengers
when the pack-horses were crossing, and all such
were fain to take refuge in the V-shaped sanc-
tuaries that opened out on either side on the
piers of the arches, and to wait there until the
long, laden pack-horse trains had passed. But
it must be recollected that the roads leading up
to the bridge were of the like complexion and
were roads only b}/ courtesy. Wheels were out
of place on them, too ; and pack-horses and
that peculiar old Devonshire contrivance known
as a " truckamuck " were almost the only ways
of conveying goods. The truckamuck was just
a rough cart without wheels, dragged by a horse
along those uneven ways — a kind of larger and
clumsier sleigh-like affair, combining the maximum
of weight and friction with a minimum of con-
venience.
In 1796 the bridge was widened, and again
in 1832, and it still remains a very composite struc-
ture. It is associated in old country lore with
the exploit of Tom Faggus and his " strawberry
horse.''
Blackmore, in " Lorna Doone," laid hands
upon the old Faggus legends, as upon many others,
and worked them into his story ; but the redoubt-
able Tom was a real person, although more than
a mere touch of the marvellous has been given
BARNSTAPLE BRIDGE i59
in folk-lore to his career ; so that he seems a
creature compact of Dick Turpin and Robin
Hood, in equal parts. He was a native of North
Molton, and a blacksmith by trade. Ruined in
a vindictive lawsuit brought against him by Sir
Richard Bampfylde, he was obliged to leave his
home, and then turned " gentleman robber."
That odd description would appear in his case
both to mean that he robbed gentlemen only and
that his own status was that of a gentleman. It
is a quaint rustic valuation, and seems to have
been based upon the behef that he was a champion
of the poor against the rich ; that he doubled, as
it were, the parts of highwayman and reheving
officer. His exploits long ago became, by dint
of much oral repetition around the old cottage
inglenooks, quite Homeric, and his enchanted
''strawberry horse" figures as fiendishly intelligent,
trampHng the enemies of Faggus with hoofs and
savaging them with teeth, Hke a devil incarnate.
On one occasion Faggus was recognised in Barn-
staple and pursued to the bridge, whereon he and
his strawberry horse were cleverly caught by the
watch posted at either end. But the highwayman
was still more clever. He put his steed to the
parapet, cleared it and swam off safely down-
stream.
Faggus was at last captured at Porlock and
his famous horse shot; himself finally being
hanged at Taunton.
There will be no more Fagguses in North
Devon and no more Doones ; for the conditions
i6o THE NORTH DEVON COAST
that produced them are dead, and legends such as
those that were told and retold of them around
the farmhouse inglenooks on winter evenings —
and that with every re-telling gained some fresh
marvel — no longer form the entertainment of the
farmers' men. All the rustics can read now :
the maids burning the midnight candle over novel-
ettes, the men addling their brains over the
rag-bag weeklies, whose success with the million
you perceive exemplified in the pioneer instance
writ large at Lynton. So the old stories that
were handed down from one generation to another
have come to an end with the last surviving of
the illiterates, and the only people who remember
the simple folk songs are the occasional old men
who may now and then be induced to sing them,
in a quavering voice, for collectors of such things
to write down before their final disappearance.
Such a song was the following record of some
feckless person, whose every bargain was a bad
one, finally bringing disaster. Where and when
it originated, who shall say ? With slight varia-
tions, and with different choruses, the identical
song is found in all parts of rustic England ; a
kind of rural classic :
" My grandfather died, I can't tell ye how,
An' lef me six oxen and Hkevvise a plough ;
I zokl aff my oxen, and l:»ought myzelf a cow.
Thinks I to myzelf, I shall have a dairy now.
I zokl aff my cow, and bought myzelf a caaf.
Thinks I to myzelf, I have lost myzelf haaf.
I zold aff my caaf, an' bought myzelf a cat,
An' down in the earner the hll' tiling did sfjuat.
BARUM i6i
I zold aff my cat, an' bought myzelf a rat ;
With vire tu his taal, he barnt my old hat.
I zold aff my rat, an' bought myzelf a mouse,
An' with vire tu his taal, he barnt down my house."
Chorus :
" Whim- wham- jam-stram stram along, boys, down
along the room."
Barnstaple is in local speech, " Barum," after
that fashion which makes Salisbury and Shrews-
bury figure on the milestones round about as
" Sarum " and '' Salop." The name thus locally
current has given a chance to those modern
rhymesters whose activity bids fair to presently
fit every place in the gazetteer with its more or less
appropriate verse :
" There was a young lady of Barum,
Who said ' Oh ! bother skirts, I don't wear 'cm.
In knickers it's easier
To walk in the breeze here
And, in climbing the cliffs, you don't tear 'em '."
It matters little, or nothing, that there are not
any cliffs at Barnstaple, and that you would not
seek at this precise spot for the most boisterous
breezes.
The town is alike the oldest and the most im-
portant on this coast. Long before that usual
starting point, the coming of the Normans, it
figured prominently as Beardanstapol. Although
it was once the site of a castle, and was for many
centuries a walled town with defensible gates, its
21
i62 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
inhabitants were essentially, from the beginning,
a trading community, as the " staple " in the place
name indicates. It was also one of the oldest
Parliamentary boroughs, having sent representa-
tives from 1295 until 1885, when ruthless redistri-
bution, utterly without sentiment, merged it in a
county division. Then the ancient local passion
for bribery and corruption ceased automatically
to be satisfied at intervals by competitive candi-
dates for the honour of representing the " free and
independent " burgesses, who greatly liked the
free-handed and rejected with scant ceremony those
who were not prepared to dive deeply into their
pockets. Thus, when in 1865 Mr. Henry Hawkins,
afterwards Lord Brampton, was invited to stand
in the Liberal interest, the invitation was issued
quite as much in the local interest and in the ex-
pectation that he would be as liberal with his
mone}^ as in his political opinions. But the
eagerly expectant people of Barnstaple received
a nasty shock, for the rising barrister refused to
spend a penny in bribery. The indignant electors,
mindful of the glorious election of 1841, when £80
was paid for one vote, had their feelings outraged
in the tenderest place, and rejected him with
remarkable completeness.
From A.D. 928, when Athelstan is said to have
conferred a charter upon the town, and 938, when
he is supposed to have repaired the walls, already
old and decayed, Barnstaple fully took advantage
of its favourable situation in a sheltered estuary,
and tlic })ort was large enough to be repre-
HISTORY, COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE 163
sented by ships at the siege of Calais in 1346. In
1588 it sent five ships to Liverpool's one, in the
levy raised to combat the Spanish Armada ;
among them vessels with the proud, high-sound-
ing names, Tiger, God Save Her, and Galleon
Dudley. After thus serving their country, the
Barnstaple merchants served themselves well, by
equipping numerous privateers that successfully
preyed upon the Spanish mercantile marine, and
brought home to the old port on the Taw great
store of treasure in gold, silver, and goods brought
by Spanish sail from the Spanish main, and in-
tended for Cadiz rather than for North Devon.
It was the Golden Age of Barnstaple. The
burgesses manufactured woollen goods and baize
and sold them in good markets, and the bold sea-
men sallied forth and patriotically scoured the
ocean, and took by force of arms anything they
liked. Sometimes they ran up against what a
modern American would style a " tough proposi-
tion," in the form of an innocent-looking Spanish
merchantman better armed and more courageously
manned than they suspected, and the results were
not so fortunate : but, naturally enough, records
of these misfortunes are not given so prominent a
place in the history of these things ; and you are
invited rather to picture the returned sea-captains,
bursting with riches, carousing in the taverns of
Boutport Street, and paying for their entertain-
ment with moidores, doubloons, " pieces of eight "
(whatever they were), and other outlandish coin.
Coin of foreign mintage was more common than
i64 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
the pieces of Queen Elizabeth (" God Save Her "),
and passed current as readily.
To those times of unparalleled prosperity, which
continued until well into the third quarter of the
eighteenth century, belong many of those existing
architectural remains of old Barnstaple that are
becoming increasingly difficult to find in the re-
buildings and other changes of our own times.
Out of the abundance of his riches old Penrose in
1627 founded the almshouses that still remain very
much as he left them ; and in that era the quays
and Castle Street were occupied, not only with the
warehouses, but the residences also, of the mer-
chants who traded with distant countries or levied
private war upon the foreigner, with equal readi-
ness. A complete change has, indeed, come upon
that quarter, for the Barnstaple Town railway
station, a brewery, and some entirely modern
houses stand upon the spot where the merchants
did not disdain to live over their counting-houses,
looking upon the river, where the weather-beaten
vessels, at last come home from alien seas, were
warped to shore. Of that old time there is a very
fine old doorway left in Castle Street ; and in Cross
Street, near by, over a tailor's shop, there is the
first-floor front room of a late sixteenth-century
house with a most elaborate Renaissance plaster
ceiling and frieze, probably executed for some
enriched merchant, fully conscious of what was
due, in the way of display, to his wealth. The
design is curious, the workmanship rough, the
feeling of it imbued with a religious cast ; char-
HISTORY, COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE 165
acteristics, all of them, common to much work of
the kind executed at that period in North Somerset
and North Devon, from Minehead to Bideford.
The Renaissance had come very slowly down this
way, on its long journey from Italy, and had lost
AN OLD DOOR, BARNSTAPLE.
on the way the line touch of its native land. It
had lost also much of the somewhat pagan char-
acter it exhibited there, and became greatly con-
cerned in the more prominent narratives of the
Old Testament. Vague legends tell of wandering
i66 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Italian craftsmen executing the plaster ceilings
and elaborate chimney-piece designs often found
in old houses of the better class in these districts,
but they were probably Englishmen, who had
picked up something of the trick of the new style,
without very much of foreign dexterity, but had
imported their own thought into the work. At
any rate the numerous examples met with have
so striking a general likeness of treatment that
the conclusion of their being the work of a distinct
school becomes inevitable.
Here, in this Cross Street example, the subject
is Adam and Eve ; Eve (with her arms ending in
a trefoil instead of hands) about to pluck a very
large apple off a very small tree, and Adam looking
greatly alarmed. The Trevelyan Hotel has several
decorated ceilings and a dark little back room —
now merely a receptacle for lumber, and sadly
injured — with a very elaborate chimney-piece in
high relief, bearing a central medallion represent-
ing the Nativity, bordered by typical Renaissance
scroll-work and flanked with two armour-clad
figures, minus a limb or two each. The " Golden
Lion " inn, however, has the finest display, to
which, indeed, it has every right, the building
having formerly been the town-house of the Bour-
chiers, Earls of Bath.
It is a fine old house, dating from early in the
seventeenth century, with many oak-panelled
rooms and passages, and several with ceilings
intricately decorated in plaster reliefs. The large
upstairs sitting-room is the gem of the house, dis-
HISTORY, COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE 167
playing, as it does, a coved ceiling dated 1625,
with pendants and the arms of the Bourchiers,
together with scenes representing Adam and Eve,
the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the Sacrifice
of Esau, disposed at intervals amid a large mixed
assemblage of horses, pheasants, and storks.
But most significant of all amid these signs of
OLD ROOM IN THE " TREVELYAN ARMS."
Barnstaple's prosperous old days, when all goods
were sea-borne, and when its importance as capital
of North Devon was impossible to be questioned
by undue ease of communication with distant
cities, is the curious old loggia, or covered way,
known as " Queen Anne's Walk." Not Queen
Anne, but the Barnstaple merchants, walked here,
and it was really built in the reign of Charles the
i68
THE NORTH DEVON COAST
vSecond. It was the merchants' Exchange, their
Rialto, where all news was discussed, bargains
made, and debts paid. All those uses are past
and done with, but the curious flat-topped pedestal
remains in front, on which those old traders paid
their debts. Exactly such things are still to be
seen, for example, outside the Exchange at Bristol.
There they are called " nails " ; and from them
and this own brother to them derived the expres-
sion of paying for anything *' on the nail." Now-
QUEEN ANNE S WALK.
adays the saying is a synonym for paying ready
money, but it would no doubt be incorrect to de-
duce from it the lack of long credit in times of old.
The only association this building has with Queen
Anne is found in the statue of her, surmounting it,
dated 1708, the gift of Robert Rolle of Steven-
stone.
Barnstaple Friday market, held every week, is
to this day an astonishing revelation to the stranger
of the amount of business done in the great market
buildings. On any other day he will find the town
so quiet that the excellent shops and the many
HISTORY, COMMERCIAL IMPORTANCE 169
strikingly expensive new buildings seem to require
some explanation. Friday, however, when every
street is thronged, removes any such necessity.
And the annual occasion of Barnstaple Fair,
opened with some ceremony on September 19th
by the Mayor, is still a great event in North Devon.
On that momentous day the Mayor and Corpora-
tion regale a select company at lunch, after an
old custom, with spiced ale and toast ; and still
the stuffed white glove, old-time symbol to debtors
that they may adventure into the town during
the continuance of the fair without fear of arrest,
is displayed outside the Town Hall, although its
significance is not now of much moment to either
debtor or creditor.
In 1642 there burst upon the quiet Barnstaple
folk, only too anxious to be let alone to manufac-
ture woollens, and to import foreign wines, and
so grow rich in trade, the great Civil War. The
town was ver}^ comfortable then ; still rich with
the privateering of years before, but by force of
circumstances, more respectable, for England had
been for awhile at peace with Spain, and throat-
cutting, treasure-grabbing expeditions, once pa-
triotic, would then have been sheer piracy on the
high seas. In this highly proper mood, and with
their commercial instincts outraged by King
Charles' illegal demands for Ship Money, and the
like exactions, it is not surprising that Barnstaple
people declared for the Parliament. But the
vindictiveness with which they took that side is
surprising. Not content to remain splendidly
22
lyo
THE NORTH DEVON COAST
defensive of their rights and their money-bags,
they detailed a force to go and attack the small
Royalist force holding Torrington. They were
successful, and drove out 500 men, killed 10,
took 40 prisoners and 200 stand of arms. The
Royalists were further worsted at Sourton Down,
on the borders of Dartmoor, but regained their
position in the West at the battle of Stratton,
where Sir Bevil Grenville most severely defeated
--^ -^^St±^^^ ^
BARNSTAPLE CHURCH AND GRAMMAR SCHOOL.
the Roundheads, and subsequently demonstrating
against Bideford, planted a Royalist garrison in
a fort at Appledore commanding the sea approaches
to Bideford and Barnstaple ; with the looked-for
result attending that last strategical disposition.
Barnstaple surrendered, September 2nd, 1643, and
the Royalists took possession. And here they
remained, in fancied security, until the townsfolk
revolted and retook possession. Appledore fort,
BARNSTAPLE PARISH CHURCH 171
however, held out, and within the month another
force of King's men, marching upon Barum,
again reduced it. The Royahst position here then
became so secure, that the Prince of Wales (after-
wards Charles the Second) was sent here for safety,
with his tutor, and remained until July 1645,
when it was thought safer, in the waning fortunes of
the Royalists, to remove him further West. Mean-
while, the Parliamentary forces under Fairfax
were coming, beating down Royalist resistance as
they came. At length, in April 1646, they be-
sieged Barum, and, nearly all else being lost to
them in the West, the Royalists in five weeks
finally laid down their arms.
Barnstaple old parish church is a great roomy
building, its walls plentifully furnished with monu-
ments of the old merchants. It stands in an alley
known as Paternoster Row ; its wooden, lead-
sheathed spire, like that of Braunton, warped on
one side, and in like manner. A plain white
tablet on the exterior wall reads :
Beneath
lie
the Remains of John Whuatly
a
Native of Salilbury who died
an unprofitable Servant the
21
Day of September 1774 aged
82 Years
This hints mysteriously of a misspent life, but no
one knows anything of the circumstances.
172 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Almost adjoining the church stands what was
formerly St. Anne's Chapel. At the Reformation,
it became the Grammar School, and so remains.
Between 1686 and 1761 it was also used, by per-
mission of the Corporation, as a chapel, by the
French Protestant refugees who had fled from the
persecution of the Huguenots. A tablet facing
Paternoster Row is to the memory of Thomas Lee,
architect, drowned at Morthoe, 1834.
The River Taw is now bordered up-stream with
leafy promenades, and by the Rock Park, another
of the modern innovations upon the old order of
things. To those who — seeing no rocks, but only
smooth lawns and much landscape-gardening in
the park — object that this pleasance belies its
name, it is a sufficient reply to state that it was the
gift of Mr. W. F. Rock, a native of Barum,
and a member of the London firm of wholesale
stationers, Rock Brothers.
And the river Taw runs past, over its broad
bed of sand, or swirls fiercely up at the flood tide
from the sea, bringing up seaweed and driftwood,
and sometimes a fragment of wreck from the
channel.
The wisdom of not retrieving all and every
description of " wreck of the sea " seems to be
pointed out by the sad seventeenth-century
story of the four (not seven) brother fishermen
who, fishing, after their daily custom, in the
estuary of the Taw long ago, hauled ashore a
bundle of rugs and bedding, floating up on the
tide. It would appear that these articles had
"SEVEN BRETHREN BANK" 173
been flung overboard from some ship afflicted
with the plague, for the fishermen themselves died
of it and were buried up river, off Tawstock, at a
point still known, by an odd confusion of ideas,
as " Seven Brethren Bank " ; the spot having
originally been marked by seven elms. A tomb-
stone, long since vanished, was erected by Thomas
and Agnes Ley, parents of the unhappy fishermen,
with the inscription :
" To the memory of our four sweet sons, John, Joseph, Thomas,
and Richard, who, immaturcly taken from us altogether by
Divine Providence, are Hear inter 'd, the 17 August, Anno
1646.
" Good and great God, to Thee we do resigne
Our four dear sons, for they were duly Thine,
And, Lord, we were not worthy of the name
To be the sonnes of faithful Abrahame,
Had we not learnt for Thy just pleasure' sake
To yield our all, as he his Isaack.
Reader, perhaps thou knewest this field, but ah !
'Tis now become another Macpelah.
What then ? This honour, it doth boast the more,
Never such seeds were sowne therein before,
W'' shall revive, and Christ His angells warne
To bcarc with triumphe to the heavenly Barne. "
It was in the same year of this tragical trover that
Barnstaple was stricken with the plague, probably
by the agency of the same ship : a cargo of wool
having then been landed at Bideford quays from
the Levant. Bideford suffered first, and then
Barnstaple.
A hilly road takes you up, out of Barnstaple,
on the way to Bideford, out of sight of the river.
174 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Past Bickington it goes, and Fremington — Frem-
ington that was once a borough town and port,
returning two members to Parliament in the reign
of Edward the Third. Fremington finds mention
in Blackmore's " Maid of Sker," where its creek is
styled " Deadman's Pill " ; but there is little,
otherwise, to remark about it. Pretty, and over-
hung with trees where the road runs past the old
church ; but otherwise, no place to demand much
attention. It is different with Instow, down the
road, where the rivers Taw and Torridge join
forces with the sea.
Instow is in two parts ; the somewhat inland
village and the water-side fringe of houses known
as Instow Quay. The first of these two is old
enough to find mention in Domesday Book, where
it is called Johannestow ; and from that to " John-
stow " and the present form was only the inevit-
able action of the centuries. The church gave it
that name, having been dedicated to St. John
Baptist.
The Quay, looking straight across to Appledore
and out to the west, commands magnificent sun-
sets over the sea, with lovely views up the river
Torridge and its heavily- wooded banks ; the
famous bridge of Bideford and the white houses of
that town clearly to be seen, three miles away ;
or, lovelier still, and mysterious in the twilight—
'' the dimpsey," as they call it in North Devon.
The river Taw is fine, but the lovely Torridge
is its much more beautiful sister. Those familiar
with South Devon will readily find a remarkable
THE LOVELY TORRIDGE 175
resemblance between the estuaries of the Exe and
the Torridge, and in the upper reaches wih not
fail to note an equal likeness to the Teign, just
below Newton x\bbot. And, to clinch the resem-
blance, Listow Quay is not unlike Starcross, with
the further similarity of a railway running by.
Here is the same waterside line of houses, chiefly
of the Regency and Early Victorian white-faced
sort, just on the verge of becoming romantic, by
mere effluxion of time. Little plaster-faced villas
with green-painted verandahs and hairpin railings
enclosing close-cropped hedges of privet or euony-
mus, approached by neat pebble-pitched path-
ways, sometimes, for greater effect of decoration,
done in white pebbles, with a pattern of brown. I
can imagine our great-grandmothers, as pretty
girls of sweet seventeen, in book-muslin, taking
holiday here and reading Jane Austen and
Mrs. Gaskell.
Opposite lies Appledore, with the tall tower of
what looks like a church on its scarred hillside, and
is really a look-out tower known as " Chanter's
Folly " ; and sometimes you may see the grey
mass of Lundy, on the horizon. Lonely Lundy,
to which His Majesty's mails go only once weekly
from Instow Quay, per sailing-skiff Gannet. For
those who like tumbling on the ocean wave, the
cruise there and back in the day on those weekly
sailings is enjoyable ; but for those who do not
happen to be good sailors, the return fare of five
shillings only admits to five shillings' worth of sheer
misery. So Lundy generally remains to unsea-
176 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
worthy visitors to Instow a great unknown
quantity.
The road runs close beside the estuary, all the
way from Instow to Bideford, passing the nobly
wooded hillsides of Tapeley Park, with its tall
obelisk to the memory of one of the Cleveland
family who fell at Inkerman. Bideford, on the
opposite shore, becomes revealed, not only as a
waterside town, but as very much of a hillside
town as well, and with a not inconsiderable suburb
on the hither side of the river : a suburb known
as " East-the- Water." Here we come to the heart
of that district of North Devon so intimately asso-
ciated with Kingsley and his "Westward Ho!"
that it is very generally known as the " Kingsley
Country."
CHAPTER XII
KINGSLEY AND " WESTWARD HO ! " — BIDEFORD
BRIDGE — THE GRENVILLES — SIR RICHARD
GRENVILLE AND THE REVENGE— THE ARMADA
GUNS— BIDEFORD CHURCH— THE POSTMAN
POET
" The little white town of Bideford," wrote
Kingsley lovingly, " which slopes upward from
its broad tide-river paved with yellow sands, and
the many-arched old bridge where salmon wait
for autumn floods." He wrote a part of " Westward
Ho ! " in the drawing-room of the " Royal Hotel "
at East- the- Water, looking across to Bideford quay
and the little white town that so strongly inspired
him ; and the room is styled the " Kingsley Room "
at this day. The older part of the house was once
the residence of one of those old merchant princes
who flourished at many a port, centuries ago, and,
amassing wealth swiftly in their overseas ventures,
built houses for themselves befitting their dignity.
At King's Lynn, at Poole, at Ipswich, and many
another ancient port, the stately residences of
those men, who risked much and often gained
greatly, are still to be found ; and often in the
neighbouring churches you see their monuments
177 23
178 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
in brass or marble, picturing them in furred robes
and linen ruffs, piously upon their knees, with
hands devotionally placed, just as though they
never had dabbled in piracy and privateering, as
undoubtedly they often did.
The house that is now the " Royal " was built
by one of these merchants in the year 1688. The
noble oaken staircase and the elaborately decorated
ceiling of the drawing-room survive to show us
that he did not think the best obtainable too good
for him. The moulded plaster ceiling, designed
in festoons of fruit, flowers, and foliage in high
relief, is one of the finest works of that local North
Devon and Somerset school of decorative artists
already referred to at length.
The " Royal," where Kingsley wrote, com-
mands a view along the famous bridge of Bideford.
Never, surely, was other bridge so praised, sung,
and celebrated, in all manner of ways, as this
bridge of Bideford. The bridge is Bideford, to
all intents ; and only the name of the town fails to
reflect its glory. It has obstinately remained, in
spite of that bridge, what it was before ever a
bridge of any kind was thought possible to be
built by hand of man — " By-the-Ford." For
that, we are told, was the original name of Bide-
ford ; or, in its full majesty, the real original
name of the place was " Renton-by-the-Ford,"
which many-jointed and inconvenient title has
only by degrees arrived at what it is now.
It was too late to change the name of the town
when at last the bridge was set a-building, about
BIDEFORD BRIDGE 179
1350 ; or else, be sure of it — so proud has Bideford
ever been of its bridge — the change would have
been made.
I hope no Devonian will think the worse of me
for comparing Bideford Bridge with an old stock-
ing. I merely wish to put in a picturesque way
the fact that, although it has never been actually
rebuilt, it has been so patched, re-cased, widened,
re-widened, repaired, and otherwise amended,
during some five centuries and a half, that, like a
much-darned stocking, little is left of the original.
Having thus deprecated hostile criticism, we will
pass on to details. It has twenty-four pointed
arches of various size, and spans the river in a
total length of six hundred and seventy-seven feet.
As to the original building of it, there are many
legends, to take the place of facts lost in the mists
of ages. According to these, there were angelic
and demoniac contendants for and against ; and,
indeed, in one way and another, the devil seems to
have taken a great interest in old By-the-Ford
In the usually received version, it was " Sir "
Richard Gourney, a priest (all priests were then
" Sir " by courtesy), who first began the work, and
an angel who in a vision laid the burden of it upon
him. The bridge was to be built on that spot
where he should find a great stone fixed in the
ground.
Waking from this dream, he walked by the side
of the river, where he had often walked before,
and to his astonishment, saw a rock in mid-stream,
where never, to his knowledge, had such a thing
i8o THE NORTH DEVON COAST
lain. Straightway, convinced of the Divine origin
of the vision, he narrated it to the Bishop of Exeter,
and obtained from him the usual mediaeval en-
couragement for all who might be prevailed upon
to contribute to so excellent an enterprise. That
is to say, he granted indulgences : liberty to do
this and that, and a liberal discount off the usual
term of Purgatory, which, in the Roman Catholic
scheme of things in the hereafter, awaits the
departed soul before it can enter Paradise. The
pious, and even the wicked, who believed and
trembled, and knew a bargain when they saw it,
responded liberally, and so at last the thing was
done. Not without let and hindrance from the
devil, be sure of that ! For " devil," however, read
quicksands, and we shall probably be nearer the
mark ; for the broad estuary was full of such, and
they rendered building a work of infinite patience
and resource. In the end, the bridge was built
on patience and prayer, and — on sacks of wool !
Now whether those who made the bridge did really
get in the foundations of the piers on woolsacks
thrown into the sand until they touched bottom
(something after the manner in which Stephenson
floated his railway across Chat Moss on faggots) ;
or whether the story is merely a perversion of
Bideford's old and prosperous wool-trade having
been taxed for the work — and thus, in a sense, the
bridge being " built on woolsacks " — there are no
means of saying.
In 1810, the bridge was found — like Barnstaple
bridge, a few years earlier — too narrow for in-
BIDEFORD BRIDGE i8i
creasing trafBc. Wheeled conveyances were then
replacing pack-horses, and it was necessary to double
the road across. Fortunately, as in most bridges
built in remote times, the sturdy piers were pro-
vided with cutwaters projecting far on either side,
and on these the semicircular arches of the widen-
ing were turned. The cost of this, ;£3,200, seems
in our own expensive age, singularly light ; and sure
enough, a further widening in 1865, cost ;£6,ooo.
Were it to do again, perhaps £14,000 would
hardly suffice.
Of course, the bridge being so important a
means of communication, it was not merely built
by pious hands, but was liberally endowed as well ;
and a chapel stood at the eastern end, on the
furthest side from the town, at which few travel-
lers who could afford an offering failed to give
something. The bequests and the funds accu-
mulated for its maintenance are now administered
by a " Bridge Trust," which is a wealthy corpora-
tion, performing out of its handsome income of
£1,000 a year, much good work for Bideford, in
the way, not only of bridge repair, but extension
of quays, schools, and the like. Also it gives, or
rather gave, excellent dinners. The dinner-giving
era is now only a fond memory, since the Charity
Commissioners frowned down feasting at tlie ex-
pense of the trust funds.
All these various legends and functions led
Charles Kingsley to write it down '' an inspired
bridge ; a soul-saving bridge ; an alms -giving
bridge ; an educational bridge ; a sentient bridge ;
i82 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
and last, but not least, a dinner-giving bridge."
The bridge, he proceeds to say, " is a veritable
esquire, bearing arms of its own (a ship and a
bridge proper on a plain field), and owning lands
and tenements in many parishes, with which the
said miraculous bridge has, from time to time,
founded charities, built schools, waged suits at law,
and, finally, given yearly dinners, and kept for
that purpose (luxurious and liquorish bridge that
it is !), the best-stocked cellar of wine in all Devon."
Weep, weep for the days that were, the days
that are no more !
The rise of Bideford as a port in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth was largely
due to the Grenville family, then
all-powerful in the neighbour-
hood. The town was incor-
porated at that time : the
borough seal bearing date i577-
Shipbuilding then became a
most important industry. But
never at any time did Bideford approach the
importance of Barnstaple.
The Grenvilles, who bulked so largely here and
in Cornwall, were of Norman ancestry, and their
ancestor, who came over at the Conquest, called
cousins with the Conqueror. They numbered a
long line of gallant and distinguished men, which
came to greatest distinction in the reigns of
Elizabeth and Charles the First. Since that
time they have split up into many distinct
famihcs.and even write tlioir names in four different
SEAL OF BIDEFORD.
■m4Wf
THE GRENVILLES 185
ways : Greiiville, Granville, Grenfell, and Green-
field ; but, although branches have acquired
peerages, none of the race has won to the fame
attained by those who flourished in the long ago.
Intolerably proud, they at any rate had the
driving-force of pride, which kept them at a high
level of conduct and made them gallant gentlemen,
who would have thought it shame to yield in fight,
even though the odds were overwhelming. If a
Grenville might not always conquer (for even to
the brave victory is not assured), at least he
might, and did, fight grimly to the end, as it was
the tradition of his kind to do.
Two Grenvilles stand out prominently from
that long line, for heroic valour. They were
grandfather and grandson. The elder was that
Sir Richard Grenville (or " Greynvile," as he
wrote his name), who was Drake's right-hand man
in the defeat of the Armada in 1588. Three years
later, we find him, with his Admiral, Lord Thomas
Howard, at Flores, off the Azores Islands, lying in
wait for a number of Spanish treasure-ships due
to pass that way. I do not think that enterprise
was a very heroic errand, for Howard had sixteen
ships, with a fighting force, and the treasure-
laden galleons were ill-protected. I figure it on
a par with a footpad with a bludgeon, lurking
behind a hedge in wait for some plethoric old
gentleman and his gold repeater. The result of
an encounter, in both instances, would be a fore-
gone conclusion. But, unhappily, Howard's force
had not fallen in with those great treasure-laden
24
i86 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
three-deckers before word came of a numerous and
well-equipped squadron of Spanish iighting-ships
on the way. It was a most unfortunate pass.
Howard's ships were small and ill-found, and his
men suffering from scurvy. They were re-fitting
on the islands at the time, and hurriedly completed
and stood out to sea, with the intention of evading
the superior force, said to have numbered fifty-
three vessels, and ten thousand men. This evasion
may not sound heroic, but it was prudence, and
Howard was an admiral who could have been
counted upon to fight, had he seen a chance.
Grenville, with his " intolerable pride and in-
satiable ambition," disobeyed the orders of his
superior, and instead of evading the Spaniards,
made, " with wilful rashness," as those who saw
him wrote, to dash through their line, and cannon-
ade them as he went. His little Revenge was,
however, becalmed in their midst and surrounded,
and there, aginst tremendous odds, was fought
out that long fifteen hours' battle which inspired
one of Tennyson's finest lyrics. The heroism of
that long tragedy in which the Revenge, Grenville,
and his crew of one hundred and fifty men bore
their unflinching part has been made the subject
of accumulated legends. The entire hostile force
of fifty-three ships and ten thousand men is said to
have been employed, but the facts seem to be that
a large number of the Spanish vessels were supply
ships, and that of the twenty ships of war they had,
some fifteen, with five thousand men, were en-
gaged in battering the English ship.
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE 187
That is heroism sufficient, without needing
exaggeration ; one against fifteen, to return shot
for shot in a fifteen hours' battle. Tennyson, how-
ever, accepts the still more marvellous story :
" He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to
fight,
And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in
sight,
With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather-bow.
' Shall we fight, or shall we fly ?
Good Sir Richard, let us know ;
For to fight is but to die !
There'll be little of us left by the time this sun be set.'
And Sir Richard said again, ' We be all good Englishmen ;
Let us bang these dogs of vSeville, the children of the devil,
For I never turned my back on Don or devil yet.'
" And the sun went down and the stars came out, far over
the summer sea,
But never for a moment ceased the fight of the one and
the fifty-three.
Ship after ship, the whole night long, those high-built
galleons came,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle,
thunder, and flame ;
Ship after ship, the whole night long, then back with her
dead and her shame,
For some were sunk and many were shattered, and so could
fight us no more —
God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world
before ? "
The Revenge yielded only when, of all her men,
there were left only twenty alive, and most of them
grievously wounded, the ship herself a wreck, and
i88 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
the ammunition expended. Such were the EUza-
bethans ! " All the powder to the last barrell
was now spent, all her pikes broken, the masts all
beaten over board, all her tackle cut asunder,
her upper worke altogether rased, and in effect
euened shee was with the water, and but the verie
foundacion or bottom of a ship, pierced with eight
hundred shot of great artillerie." Grenville, him-
self mortally wounded, would have sunk the poor
remains of his ship :
" Sink me the ship, Master Gunner — sink her, split her in
twain,
FaU into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain ! "
But the crew, brought to this pass entirely by
Grenville' s hot-headed bravery, rightly considered
something was due to them. After all, a Spanish
fighting man had also some sense of chivalry, and
knew how to respect a brave enemy, conquered
by superior force. So the Revenge was surrendered
on honourable terms, and Grenville himself taken
aboard the San Pablo, the Admiral's ship, to die,
three days later, of his wounds. It was no
craven surrender, and the battered Revenge almost
immediately emphasised that, by sinking, with
numbers of Spanish wounded aboard.
Grenville died with, as it were, a confession of
patriotic faith. He spake it in the Spanish
tongue, that all miglit liear : " Here die I,
Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind
for that I have ended my life as a true soldier
ought to do, tliat hatli fought for his country,
THE ARMADA GUNS 189
queen, religion, and honour. Whereby my soul
most joyfully departeth out of this body, and shall
always leave behind it an everlasting fame of a
valiant and true soldier, that hath done his duty
as he was bound to do."
Sir Bevil Grenville, grandson of this hero, was
born in 1596, and after upholding the King's
standard with success in the West, and winning
the Battle of Stratton, May i6th, 1643, was killed
on July 5th, following, at the Battle of Lansdowne,
on the heights above Bath. There are now no
representatives of the Grenvilles left in the neigh-
bourhood of Bideford.
They were not all loyalists in the West. We,
have seen the Puritan spirit, militant, at Barn-
staple ; and Bideford stood out against the King's
men ; the fort erected on the hill-top at East-the
Water by Major-General Chudleigh still remaining,
and indeed restored, as a witness to historic times.
Other and much more interesting relics than
those empty embrasures upon the sky-line are
found in the eight Armada guns that lie in a row
outside the Technical School, on the quay and in
the neighbourhood of the Kingsley statue. Or,
at any rate, they are reputed to be Armada guns ;
which, with the sure fact that they are foreign, and
the probability of their being Spanish, is as far as
their story is likely to be told. In these parts
they were so used to bring home captured ships, and
to litter the quays with the spoils of other people,
that the thing became commonplace and not
worth recording at the time. And by that later
igo THE NORTH DEVON COAST
time, when the story of the reUcs got beyond re-
cording, and no one really knew anything at all
about them, they were all at once found to be
curious and interesting — with the key to their story
lost. They were then buried half their length in
the quay and served the commonplace, if useful,
purpose of posts, from which they have now been
rescued. Long and slender, with long sloping
shoulders, something in shape like exaggerated
hock-bottles, they certainly resemble the indubit-
able Armada guns found on the wrecked ship at
Tobermory in recent years. Nor are these all
existing in the neighbourhood. There is one,
astonishingly encrusted with long lying in the sea,
thrown carelessly aside, opposite the Royal Hotel,
Westward Ho ! ; two that formerly stood as posts
on Instow quay are now at Tapeley Park, three
are at Portledge, three others on the qua}^ at
Clovelly, and it is currently reported that several
have been seen on the sea-bottom off Westward
Ho ! at exceptionally low tides.
Bideford Quay, that figures in circumstances
of considerable stress in the great romance by
Kingsley, is a very different place from the quay
of Elizabethan days. A broad roadway runs now,
where water and mudbanks once stood. Kingsley
himself would scarce recognise it. Paradoxically
enough, all these works and improvements have
been undertaken since the commerce of the town
has declined. There is no fierce energy at Bideford
to-day, and such shipping as there remains is very
casual. vSome few old houses — older than they
BIDEFORD CHURCH
191
look from without, remain by quayside ; in
especial, the " Three Tuns " inn, with a seven-
teenth-century plaster mantelpiece in an upstairs
room, with figures in the costume of the time,
clinging uncouthly to Renaissance ornament.
Bideford church is so closely surrounded by
narrow lanes that it is not a remarkably con-
spicuous building. Except the tower, it is quite
BIDEFORD QUAY.
modern, the people of Bideford having in the
eighteenth century been afflicted with that per-
versity for destroying Gothic buildings and rearing
classic in their stead which desolated so many
places. In its turn, the fantastic thing that is
said to have resembled a lecture-hall, rather than
a church, was demolished in 1865. A fine monu-
ment to Sir Thomas Graynfylde, 15 14, stands on
the south side of the chancel, and near by is a brass
plate inscribed with the dying speech of Sir
192 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Richard Grenville, at Flores. The register of
1591 describes him as " being in his lifetime the
Spaniards' terror."
The monument of John Strange, merchant of
Bideford, deserves notice, for he was no less brave
a man. He died in 1646, the year the plague
made such havoc here. It was the fourth year of
his mayoralty. All others in authority had fled
the infected place, but he remained to take care
of the sick ; at last, when the scourge was abating,
he took the infection and died.
What with civil war and with pestilence, Bide-
ford had a stirring time of it. Licence was then
the order of the day, and it was even possible for
sour Puritans to defile the font in the church.
Polwhele is not unduly severe in his remarks upon
how it " was appropriated for the purposes of a
trough for his swine to feed out of, by one schis-
matic. And if he had had his deserts, he would
have made one of their company."
From the church, now, to the churchyard, and
from the heroic to the eccentric, in the person of
Henry Clark, who seems to have been both spend-
thrift and lazy, as judged by his epitaph, below :
A Tribute
To the Memory of
Captain Henry Clark
of this Town
Who departed this Life 28 April 1836
Aged 61 Years.
Our worthy friend who lies beneath this stone
Was Master of a vessel all his own,
THE POSTMAN-POET 193
Houses and Lands had He, and Gold in store :
He spent the whole, and would if ten times more.
For Twenty years he scarce slept in a Bed ;
Linhays and Limekilns lull'd his weary head,
Because he would not to the Poorhouse go,
For his proud Spirit would not let him to.
The Blackbird's whistling Notes at Break of Day
Used to awake him from his Bed of Hay.
Unto the Bridge and quay he then Repair'd
To see what Shipping up the River steer'd.
Oft in the week he used to vieiv the Bay,
To see what Ships were coming in from sea.
To Captain's wives he brought the welcome News,
And to the Relatives of all their crews.
At last poor Harry Clark was taken ill.
And carried to the Workhouse 'gainst his Will ;
But being of this Mortal Life quite tired,
He liv'd about a month, and then expired.
Bideford has enjoyed a minor fame in more
modern times as the home of Edward Capern, the
" postman-poet." Capern was born at Tiverton
in 1 819. His father was a baker in that town,
but removed two years later to Barnstaple. When
eight years of age, the boy was sent to a lace-
factory and made to toil long hours, until his
health gave way. Injured in eyesight and in
general health, outdoor occupation became neces-
sary, and he at length found employment as rural
postman, between Bideford and Buckland Brewer
and district. It was a healthy occupation, but
not an easy round— thirteen miles' walking, daily
— and the pay, half-a-guinea a week, certainly was
25
194 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
not lavish. On his daily rounds he thought in
rhyme. Himself said of himself :
" He owns neither houses nor lands,
His wealth is a character good ;
A pair of industrious hands,
A drop of poetical blood."
By subscription, in 1856, a volume of his
verses was published, followed in 1858 by a second ;
and in due course by two others, " Wayside
Warbles" and "The Devonshire Melodist," the
songs set to music also composed by him. A final
volume appeared in 1881. None of these had
much wider publicity than that of the friendly sub-
scription-list. In 1866 he left Bideford and went
to live at Harborne near Birmingham, but re-
turned to Devonshire in 1884 and settled at
Braunton. A Civil List pension of /40 a year
which had been obtained for him was increased
to £60, and on this his modest wants were sustained
until his death in 1894. He was buried at Heanton
Punchardon, near by, where his old-fashioned
postman's hand-bell is placed on his grave.
Capern was sometimes moved by the warlike
memories of his neighbourhood, and wrote
" Whene'er I tread old By-thc-Ford
I conjure up the thought
'Twas here a Grenville trod
And here a Raleigh wrought."
But most characteristically Devonian is the
hymn to clotted cream, written in 1882, at Har-
borne, in reply to a present of some sent to him.
THE POSTMAN-POET 195
DEVONSHIRE CREAM
" Sweeter than the odours borne on southern gales,
Comes the clotted nectar of my native vales —
Crimped and golden-crusted, rich beyond compare.
Food on which a goddess evermore would fare.
Burns may praise his haggis, Horace sing of wine.
Hunt his Hybla-honey, which he deem'd divine,
But in the Elysiums of the poet's dream
Where is the delicious without Devon-cream ?
" Talk of peach or melon, quince or jargonel.
White-water, black-hamburg, or the muscatel,
Pippin or pomegranate, apricot or pine,
Greengages or strawberries, or your elder-wine !
Take them all, and welcome, yes, the whole, say I,
Ay ! and even junket, squab- and mazzard-pie.
Only let our lasses, like the morning, gleam
Joyous with their skimmers full of clouted cream.
" What a lot of pictures crowd upon my sight
As I view the luscious feast of my delight !
Meadows fram'd in hawthorn, coppices in green.
Village-fanes on hill-tops crowning every scene,
Buttercups, and cattle clad in coats of red,
Flocks in daisy-pastures, couples newly wed
Happy in their homesteads by a ffashing stream ; —
But what can be this golden, crimp'd, and bonny cream ?
" Quintessence of sunshine, gorse, and broomy lea,
Privet and carnation, violet and pea.
Meadowsweet and primrose, honeysuckle, briar,
Lily, mint, and jasmine, stock, and gilly-spire.
Woodruff, rose, and clover, clematis and lime,
^lyrtle and magnolia, daffodil and thyme
Is our pearl of dainties — and, to end my theme,
Nature's choice confection is old Devon's cream."
196 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Two things in the above, perhaps require ex-
planation ; " squab- and mazzard-pie." Squab-
pie is a Devonshire dish composed of mutton,
onions, apples, etc., and mazzards are a kind of
wild cherry growing in North Devon.
The original manuscript of these verses hangs
in a frame in the Bideford Public Library, where
there is also a fine oil-painting of Capern in middle
life, by the elder Widgery. For the rest, the
library contains little enough, being one of those
pretentious Carnegie buildings practically without
books ; an absurdity on a par with a showy
restaurant that should provide only the cruets for
the hungry to dine upon.
A vast amount of astonished comment has
been penned upon the strange thing that a post-
man should write poetry, but surely it is not so
remarkable a thing to find a cultivated mind in
the body of a letter-carrier ! Culture, it would
seem, is held to be the prerogative of the wealthy
and the leisured. How dreadful, if it really were
so !
CHAPTER XIII
THE KINGSLEY STATUE — NORTHAM — " BLOODY
CORNER " — APPLEDORE — WESTWARD HO ! AND
THE PEBBLE RIDGE
The traveller setting out by road from Bideford
to Appledore has a haunting feeling that he is
making for some unconsidered part of the world :
a loose end ravelling out to ineffectiveness. The
map will help him in this impression, for it shows a
tongue of land that is to all intents a dead end,
leading nowhere. Nor will the railway journey
to Westward Ho ! , now made possible by the
Bideford and Westward Ho ! Railway — an under-
taking which belongs to the " light railway "
order — help him to revise this opinion. You may
see the terminus of it on Bideford quay. There
the rails run on to the roadway, and end without
the formalities of a station, platforms, signals, or
anything of the kind. And the weird-looking
engine when it goes off, dragging the one or two
carriages after it, glides away with the air of to-
morrow being plenty of time to do the work of
to-day. The road keeps well out of sight of the
river Torridge, and is both hilly and uninteresting,
coming at last to Northam. This is the very lieart
197
igS THE NORTH DEVON COAST
of what has been styled the '' Kingsley Country,"
rich in the scenes of his " Westward Ho !", and it is
therefore of pecuhar appropriateness that a white
marble statue of him should have been erected
in 1906 on Bideford quay, whence this expedition
starts. It is an aggressive-looking Kingsley —
and therefore true to the appearance of the original
— that stands there in clerical robes, with quill
pen poised in hand, ready, as in life, with more
lionesty than discretion, to do battle for any
cause he had at heart. " The most generous-
minded man I ever knew," said Maurice of him :
with the fervour of a schoolboy and qualities of
heart better than those of head, as the unfortunate
controversy with Newman, in which that crafty
dialectician had the better of him in argument,
sufficiently proved. But although worsted in
sheer tactical marshalling of his forces, Kingsley
was instinctively right, and the sympathy of
honest men went with him, and continues.
Northam is a dusty, gritty village, standing on
a ridge that looks one way towards the Torridge,
and the other across to the great waste of Nortliam
Burrows, that repeat, on this side of the twin
Taw and Torridge estuaries, the features of Braun-
ton Burrows. On the north side of the church-
yard is a knoll, known as " Bone Hill," where a
flagstaff has been planted on a cairn of sixt}^
boulders, brought by willing hands from the famed
Pebble Ridge. The whole thing forms a home-
made loyal and patriotic memorial of the second
Jubilee of Queen Victoria, witli additions suggested
BLOODY CORNER"
199
by later events, together with an aspiration that
" these shores may never be without brave and
pious mariners, who will count their lives as
worthless in the cause of their country, their
BLOODY CORNER."
Bible, and their Oueen." But other people beside
the mariners must do their part also.
There is little deserving notice in the neigh-
bouring church, except the quaint inscription on
200 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
the interior wall of the north aisle : " This yele
was made anno 1593." Let us, then, press on to
Appledore, passing Bloody Corner, so-called by
reason of the defeat of the Danes here in a.d. 882
by King Alfred the Great, when the Danish
chieftain, Hubba, was numbered among the slain.
Hubba's Stone, where the landing of the invaders
was effected, lies near the shore of the estuary.
A recently erected memorial by the wayside
marks the Corner, and a row of even more recently
erected cheap cottages, opposite, serves effectually
to dilute any feelings of romance.
Appledore (whose name has really nothing to
do with apples, but derives from two words
meaning " water-pool ") stands at the very
entrance to the Torridge estuary. On the opposite
side is Instow.
Appledore is a decayed port ; a fishing village
long past its prime. Time was when its ship-
owners waxed rich in what the natives still call
the '' Noofunlan' Trade," but that was long ago,
and it is scarce possible even the hoariest in-
habitant recollects those times. But the buildings,
the quays are reminiscent ; the whole place
mumbles, quite plainly in the imaginative ear,
" Has Been."
This is, however, by no means to hint that
Appledore is poor, or moribund. Vessels are re-
paired in its docks, a quarry is in full blast on the
hillside, and the fishermen fare out to sea in
pursuit of the salmon and cod. The less adven-
turous gather the edible seaweed known to
APPLEDORE— WESTWARD HO! 201
epicures as " laver," or at low water ravish the
tenacious cockle and mussel from their lairs.
But, in general, Appledore has resignedly
stood still since the " Noofunlan ' " trade ceased,
and remains very much what it was at the time of
its ceasing : only something the worse for wear.
Bideford may exchange cobbles for macadam, and
even, in choice spots, wood-pavement, but Apple-
dore's lanes, which are of the dirtiest, the steepest
and most rugged description, still retain their
ancient knobbly character. In short Appledore
is a curiosity, and one not in any immediate
likelihood of being reformed out of that status,
for it is at the very end of things. So its white-
washed cottages will long, no doubt, continue to
give a specious and illusory character for cleanliness
to it, as seen across the river from Instow ; and
" Factory Ope," " Drang," and other queerly
named lanes will survive for generations yet to
come.
Returning to Northam on the way to West-
ward Ho ! I meet with a sad disillusion : nothing
less than a group of angelic-looking little girls
belying their looks by shouting ribald things, of
which no one, and least of all Charles Kingsley,
could find it possible to approve. And this in
the " Kingsley Country," too !
Westward Ho ! is all too soon disclosed to the
disillusioned eye. You see it, as you come along
the ridge road, occupying the flat lands and the
sandy wastes beside the sea, with the famed
Pebble Ridge extending towards the Burrows.
26
202 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
The scene is a beautiful display of colour : the
dark-blue sea, light-blue sky, yellow sands, blue-
grey line of pebbles and green salt-marshes, with
the Braunton lighthouse a dab of white on a
distant shore.
But Westward Ho ! is chiefly a sad collection
of forlorn houses, dressed in penitential grey
plaster. Kingsley wrote a romantic novel compact
of patriotic fervour, love of Devon, of England, and
of Elizabethan seafaring derring-do. He placed
one of the most dramatic of his scenes — the in-
terrupted duel — here, on " Bideford Sands." You
recollect the incident : Grenville intervening be-
tween the combatants, and his " Hold ! Mr.
Gary," a line moment ; but it is Failure, not
Romance that here meets the eye to-day.
The fame of the novel, "Westward Ho! " brought
thousands of pilgrims into these parts, and aroused
great enthusiasm. At that time these sands were
lonely in the extreme. Not a single house stood
upon them. But the astonishing success of that
book led to the spot being " discovered " and
duly exploited. Enterprising persons, finding that
Bideford town was, after all, not a seaside resort,
conceived the idea of founding a place which, with
its sea-bathing advantages, should become in
time as popular as, say, Weston-super-Mare. But
they forget the fact — an enormous factor in the
fortunes of such places — that, being on the way to
nowhither, there was no railway here, and that
there, consequently, never could be, by any chance,
an easy and convenient approach from any large
WESTWARD HO! 203
town whence holiday-makers come. Thus for-
getful " Westward Ho !" was founded. A hotel
designed on a scale large enough for the con-
siderable town expected to develop was the first
care, but the place has never prospered, and
failure is everywhere insistent. Three-fourths of
the houses are empty and the others are chiefly
occupied by people who wonder why they ever
came — and wish they hadn't. These are those
who by some cruel fate of necessity — choice or
pleasure are surely out of the question — are an-
chored here.
But no thought of this fate crossed the minds
of those projectors. They saw a brilliant future
awaiting Westward Ho ! and impressed others
with their confidence. A " Kingsley Memorial
College " was built, and a " United Services
College " followed. Both are now closed and
add their own note of melancholy to the otherwise
sufficiently dismal place.
The United Services College was founded in
1874 by the exertions of General Sir H. C. B.
Daubeney and a number of officers of the services.
The idea was to provide a public-school education
for the children of officers in Army, Navy, and
Civil Services, at a lower cost than usual. " Fear
God and honour the King " was its motto, and
mural and naval crowns, surmounting crossed
swords and anchor, were its badges. Mr. Rudyard
Kipling was educated here, and the College there-
fore figures in that story of peculiarly nasty
schoolbo3^s, " Stalky & Co."
204 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
The " Pebble Ridge " is a good deal better to
look at than to walk on. Conceive a raised beach,
flung up out of the sea in the course of countless
seasons, and forming, as it were, a natural embank-
ment, fashioned by the waves against their own
encroachment upon the salt-marshes. But do not
imagine a ridge of pebbles like those that rattle up
and down to the scour of the tides at Brighton.
Those are like the stones found in gravel ; but
what is in North Devon conceived to be a pebble
is a monstrous thing, rather larger than a dinner-
plate, and weighing anything from five to seven
pounds. In the times before the wretched settle-
ment of Westward Ho ! arose, and when the
rustics still talked broad Devon, these were
" popples."
CHAPTER XIV
ABBOTSHAM — " WOOLSERY " — BUCK'S MILL
A STEEP road leads up out of Bideford on the way
to Clovelly, and goes, quite shy of the sea, and
altogether out of sight of it, all the way. It is a
quite unremarkable road. Here and there, sub-
sidiary roads lead off to the right, giving access to
entirely unsuspected habitations of men, lying
variously from a quarter to half a mile distant on
the seashore, or neighbouring it. First comes the
village of Abbotsham, in its pretty valley, with a
small church, chiefly remarkable for a little un-
pretending monument, dated 1639, ^^ one x\nthony
Honey. He died aged nineteen ; and some one,
who loved him much, wrote the following epitaph
upon him, in which humour and sorrowing affec-
tion peep out, really most plainly to be seen, you
know^, like the mingled sunshine and showers of
an April day :
Hoc parvo in timmlo situs est
Anionius Hony. Melleus ille suo nomine,
more fiiit. Obiit June 1639, cBtati, sues 19.
" His manners were as sweet as his name" ;
it is a pretty fancy.
Another bye-road leads down to the old man-
sion of Portledge, seat of the Coffin family, wlio
205
2o6 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
rather intensified the gruesome suggestions of
their name by adding that of Pine to it. The
Pine-Coffins have been seated here for genera-
tions. Half a mile along the cliffs, Peppercombe
is found ; a few cottages seated in a hollow.
The main road passes at intervals, Fairy Cross,
Horns Cross, and the Hoops Inn, and presently
comes to Buck's Cross ; where one of many sign-
posts continues a long series of pointing arms to
" Woolsery." I have successfully resisted that
repeated invitation inland, and do not know what
Woolsery is like : only this, that the village of
Woolfardisworthy is indicated. But even in
North Devon, where time goes something slowly,
life is not long enough to always pronounce the
word as spelt of old, and certainly the arm of no
sign-post is long enough to contain the whole of it ;
and so the district has cast away, like so much
useless lumber, half its length.
Down on the right hand goes the road, stagger-
ingly steep, to Buck's Mill, a little cranny in the
towering wooded cliffs, where a huge limekiln and
a few white cottages hang crazily over the water.
Turner has made a pretty picture of " Bucks,"
as it is called for short — or more properly,
" Bucksh " — with a distant glimpse of the houses
of Clovelly, pouring like a cataract down the face
of the cliffs, and a still more distant peep of Lundy.
The old, old tale of the original inhabitants of
Buck's Mill having been wrecked Spaniards is
still told. You hear that story of many seaside
hamlets in the West ; but I. for one, fail to see
BUCK'S MILL 207
the swarthiness, the obvious foreign origin, of the
present men, women, and children of Bucks, so
dwelt upon in guide-books.
When I found myself down at the bottom of
that profound descent and at Buck's Mill, it began
to rain : the hopeless dogged rain that comes
down out of a leaden sk}^ deliberately, as though
it were determined to rain all night. I sat in a
leaky shed on a heap of sand and waited. . . .
Still waiting ! Some one has written, some-
where, that ignorance is the parent of wonder,
and all this while I had been wondering many
things — wondering if it were going to rain all
night ; wondering if it were not better to push on
to Clovelly ; wondering if one would get very wet
if a start were made now ; wondering why it
should be a law of Nature that hopeless rain should
set in when one was in an exposed situation and
with a considerable distance yet to go. . . . Better
chance it.
And so, pushing the bicycle up that long, steep
ascent, which in descending had seemed only a
quarter the length, I slithered through a sea of
mud along the lonely road and in a dense white
fog. It had ceased raining, on the way, but the
fog exuded almost as much moisture.
And so, cautiously, from Clovelly Cross down
to the Court and the head of that precipitous stair-
case called Clovelly " street." The promised
lingering approach, as the sun went down by the
famed Hobby Drive, had to be abandoned for the
while, and reserved for a more favourable day.
CHAPTER XV
CLOVELLY — " UP ALONG " AND " DOWN ALONG "
— THE " NEW INN " — APPRECIATIVE AMERI-
CANS— THE QUAY POOL — THE HERRING
FISHERY
Clovelly has been thought by some to have a
Roman origin, and its name to derive from
Clausa Vallis. The ingenuity of this derivation
compels our admiring attention, even if it does
not win our agreement. Ptolemy styled Hartland
Point the " Point of Hercules," and Barnstaple is
thought to have been the Roman Artavia ; but no
evidence of any kind associates Clovelly with those
times. The great triple-ditched prehistoric earth-
works at Clovelly Cross, where the road down to
the village branches from the highway, point to
some ancient people having been settled here and
greatly concerned to defend the place ; but the
history of Clovelly Dykes, or " Ditchens," as they
are called, will never be written. Clovelly's name
almost certainly derives from words meaning " the
cliff place," the site of it being amazingly cloven
down the face of the steep cliffs that on either
hand present a bold front to the sea. The force
that carved out this astonishing cleft was the same
208
CLOVELLY
209
that has fashioned the many combes and "mouths"
along this coast ; an impetuous stream rushing
from the inland heights. Indeed, the cobble-
I
V5
CLOVELLY, FROM THE HOBBY DRIVE.
stoned stairs that form the footpath of Clovelly's
" street," descending hundreds of feet to the
beach, now represent what remained until modern
times the bed of that streamlet. It poured down
27
210 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
here from the chff-top, and the curious overhanging
terraces of the " New Inn," and most of the cot-
tages are survivals of its banks. This stream was
diverted half a mile to the east, and now flows
through the Hobby Drive and over the face of
the cliff at Freshwater Cascade.
The population of Clovelly is almost entirely
seafaring : or rather, the men are fisherfolk, and
the men's wives have for years past found a second
string to the domestic bow in letting bedrooms
and providing refreshments for visitors ; so that
when circumstances forbid the chase of the herring
there is not likely to be that empty cupboard at
home, which is apt to vex the lives and haunt the
imaginations of the fisherfolk of most other sea-
board places. What competition there is in this
ministering to visitors is necessarily very limited,
because Clovelly itself is unexpanding. What it
was sixty or seventy years ago, that it remains in
almost every detail to-day. It is the manorial
appanage of Clovelly Court, standing up in its
broad Park on the cliff-top ; and has been since
the earliest times. In Domesday we find it the
property, among innumerable other manors, of
Queen Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror.
Down the centuries occur the names of Giffards,
Stantons, and Mandevilles, as owners ; and in the
reign of Richard the Second it became the pro-
perty of Sir John Cary, by purchase.
Tlie oldest part of the church is Norman, but
of those older lords of Clovelly no record survives.
They are as though they had never existed. Sir
CLOVELLY 211
Walter Robert Cary is the oldest represented here,
on a brass dated 1540. Other Carys survive in
epitaph : William, who died in 1652, aged 76, who
(it is claimed for him) not only served " three
Princes, Queen Elizabeth, King James, and King
Charles L," but his generation as well ; and
Sir " Robert Gary, Kt. (Sonne and Heyre of
William), gentleman of the Privy Chamber vnto
King Charles II., who, having served faithfully
the glorious Prince, Charles I., in the long civil
warr against his Rebellious subjects, and both
him and his sonne as Justice of the Peace, died
a Bachelor, in the 65th 3^eare of his age, An. Dom.
1675. Peritura perituris I'elique." And so at last
to the Williams family and the Hamlyns.
In the days of those older lords, when the
country was thinly populated, travel a penance,
and the delights of the picturesque unthought of,
Clovelly of course did not grow ; and in our own
times, now that beauty of situation is an asset and
distinctl}^ a factor in the value of land, and pro-
jectors of railways and hotels are currently re-
ported to have eyes upon desirable sites, the
Hamlyns have resisted all offers. So Clovelly
will probably long remain unspoiled.
It has two inns, the old '' New Inn," up-along,
as we say here, and the " Red Lion," " down tu
kaay " — not, please, ** down upon the key,"
after the style and pronunciation of the outer
world. If one could conceive such a fantastic
thing in Clovelly as a street directory, it would
consist almost wholly of those features, " Up-
212 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
along," '' Down-along," North Hill, and Quay.
" The New Inn and Hotel," as it now styles itself,
does so with some show of reason, for the original
'* New Inn " — when it was new I cannot conceive
— still stands upon one side of the road, and a
really new building has been erected opposite :
the " Hotel " referred to in the new style, without
doubt. There, in the larger rooms of modern
ideas, guests breakfast, lunch, or dine, and those
unfortunate ones who cannot be accommodated
with a bedroom in the old house across the way,
sleep. Unfortunate, I say, because at Clovelly
one wants to fare after the old style. For years
familiar (as thousands of people who have never
been to Clovelly must be) with the well-known
view of the street showing the " New Inn " and
the quaint little soldier and sailor mannikins that
serve as windmills on its projecting sign, had I
cherished a resolution to stay in the old hostelry ;
and it had now at last come to pass. Up narrow,
twisting stairs was my bedroom, looking out,
through clusters of roses, upon the street ; and
being thus gratified in the main object, it was a
small matter tliat I breakfasted and dined in the
new building across the way.
I shall say nothing of the fare of the " New
Inn," except tliat it is of the best a typically
Devonian farm could produce, and what better
would you or could you, than that ? Botli houses,
old and new — the old, with its snug little old-
fashioned bar-parlour, as tiny and as full of
corners and cupboards as a ship's cabin, and the
THE ''NEW INN"
213
new, with its large dining-room — are full to over-
flowing with the most amazing collection of
china, old brass candlesticks, kettles, pestles and
mortars, and all sorts of old-fashioned domestic
UP- ALONG. CLOVELLY.
utensils, accumulated in the course of many years
at auction or private sales. You sit down to table
in that dining-room as though you were dining
in a china-shop. Some of the china is old and
valuable, and a good deal is neither the one nor
214 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
the other. By the odd decoration of the ceihng,
representing the British " Union Jack " and the
U. S. '' Old Glory " in amity, you might suspect —
if you did not already know it by the accents of
fellow-guests^that the bulk of those who seek
the hospitality of the " New Inn " are citizens of
the United States ; but that is no reason why a
Briton should be guilty of such abject sentiments
as those inscribed between the two flags — not
" something proud and vain," as the foremost
modern novelist of the servants'-hall might say,
but something mean and cringing, to the effect
that it is hoped the United States will always
remain friendly and not attack the Mother Coun-
try. To liow many citizens of the United States
is England the Mother Country ? This is an age
when Americans of British descent are in a
minority among a huge population of cosmopolitan
European immigrants, largely consisting of
Russian and German Jews, Hungarians, and
Italians. The people of Clovelly, it may be sup-
posed, naturally seeing only those of British
descent, are ignorant of that fact. And, as for
being the object of attack, if that happened,
could we not hold our own ?
Meanwhile, the citizens of that Republic who
find their way here are delightful, inasmuch as
they themselves are so frankly delighted. Eng-
land is such a new experience to most of them,
and, whether it be a New England schoolmarm
from Pottsville, or a pork-packing multi-millionaire
from Chicago, you can clearly see that he and she
APPRECIATIVE AMERICANS 215
are as pleased as children. Some of them, too,
are naively ignorant of quite the most common-
place things. It was on North Hill, and an old
fisherman was talking to me and hoeing his garden
the while. A very charming girl came along and,
looking over the garden wall, said, in the American
language, " My ! what curious flowers those are.
What are they ? "
" Them's tetties, miss," replied the old man.
She looked puzzled. " Potatoes," I translated.
And so they were ; potatoes in flower. And
it was from America that Raleigh introduced the
vegetable, over three hundred years ago !
Those transatlantic cousins in summer pervade
Clovelly. Everywhere you hear it to be " purr-
fectly lovely," or " real ullegant," or may catch
some one " allowing " it to be " vurry pretty,"
or even a " cunning little place." Sometimes
they rhapsodise ; and when they write down their
names in the " New Inn " visitors' book, they
write much else in the appreciative sort. I wish
my own countrymen were in general as appre-
ciative of the good things in scenery and antiqui-
ties as the generality of our American visitors —
and yet, on second thoughts, I don't; because we
who do love them would be lost in the sudden
overwhelming swirl of humanity, and the tilings
delightful would be finally spoiled, beyond recall.
To examine an accumulated pile of those books
is to note that at least three-quarters of those who
stay here are Americans. "If it were not for
them/' they say at the inn in particular, and in
2l6
THE NORTH DEVON COAST
the village in general, " we could not go on." A
traveller from the United States, with his women-
kind, is generally in a hurry, but if he visits
Clovelly at all, he is, at any rate, almost certain
to stay overnight. Often he comes with a motor-
car, left at the stables far above. English holiday-
makers, on the other hand, are most largely made
up of steamboat excursionists, come for an hour
SIGN OF THE "NEW INN," CLOVELLY.
or two. You may see them landing in row-boats,
and coming straggling up-along, gazing in wonder-
ment this wa}^ and that, and then going off again,
quite content with this hurried impression. Not
tlieirs the wish to know wliat Clovelly is like in
early morning, or to witness daylight fade away
in that unique street, and the lights of the cottages
APPRECIATIVE AMERICANS 217
come out, above and below. I need not add that
they certainly do not know Clovelly with a full
knowledge.
Of those who record their stay in the visitors'
book at the " New Inn," a large proportion add
remarks, and some even indite verse. It is not
great verse, as witness the following :
Clovelly
" A heaven on earth,
A haven for the weary,
Where Nature's glory hath no dearth,
Where hfe may not be dreary."
A caustic comment upon this by a later traveller
shows that not even Clovelly may please all tastes.
" My hfe " — so carps the abandoned wretch —
" would be very dreary if I staid here long."
The soldier and sailor who occupy the project-
ing signpost of the '' New Inn," and whose arms,
revolving in the breeze like windmills, are finished
off like cricket-bats, have been there just a hundred
years, as you may perhaps see from their costumes.
They are now held together chiefly by dint of
many successive coats of paint.
Beneath, coming up or going down, clatter
the donkeys with their laden crooks — the last
survivals of the pack-horse era — for wheels are
unknown at Clovelly, and whether it be lug-
gage, or coals, or sand, or vegetables to be con-
veyed, it is some patient, sure-footed " Neddy "
that does the carrying, on his long-suffering
back. On the way they brush past the
28
2l8
THE NORTH DEVON COAST
artists, who are generally to be found calmly
seated at their easels in the middle of the
thoroughfare ; for artists are privileged persons
here, and so plentiful that no one takes the
least notice of them, and no curiosity is ever
shown as to whether they be painting well or ill.
And every visitor who is not an artist, has a
photographic camera of sorts ; so that, in one way
A CLOVELLY DONKEY,
or another, a good many incorrect representations
of riovelly are taken away in tlie course of the
year.
Halfway down to the sea, between this steeply
descending line of white houses — every one of
them old, except that modern annexe of the " New
Inn " — is tlie sharp turn where a breast-high
rough stone wall, connnanding views over tlie sea,
THE QUAY POOL
219
is known as " the Look Out." Liimediately below,
the road runs under one of the old houses, called
" Temple Bar," and thereafter goes zigzagging
" down tu Kaay."
TEMPLE BAR.
The Quay and the Quay pool compose the
most miniature of harbours : the quay itself being
a small but massive masonry pier, with a lower
walk, an upper w^alk, and a breast-wall, curving
out from a narrow strand. At high tide the water
220
THE NORTH DEVON COAST
off this pier looks so deep, and the waves rage
with .such fury, that it is with something the effect
of a dramatic revelation you find the ebb capable
of receding so far as to leave pier and pool alike
quite dry, and the boats all canted at absurd
helpless angles.
Over this little scene, the tall, sheer, tree-fringed
THE gUAY, CLOVELLY.
cliff of Gallantry Bower protrudes a sheltering
shoulder ; the smoke from Clovelly chimneys on
still days ascending perpendicularly against its
dark green background, with a comforting, cosy
sense of snug homesteads, sufficient though humble.
The " Red Lion " stands prominently here, an
odd building with something of a Swiss suggestion,
and a tunnel through its lieavy mass leading to a
cobble-stoned courtyard, where you see an up-
THE OUAY POOL
221
turned boat or two, a scatter of domestic fowls
searching for grains, and making shift with sea-
weed ; and perliaps one of those patient, all-en-
during little Clovelly donkeys, submitting to be
BACK OF THE " RED LION," CLOVELLY.
loaded up with a heavy sack by a burly fisherman,
who looks distinctly the better able of the two to
hump the burden.
Along the wall of the " Red Lion," facing the
pool, runs a bench, full in the sun, and there the
fishermen of Clovelly sit. They sit there so long
222 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
and so often that they have Uttle conversation :
their pipes and the mere supporting presence of
each other appearing to be quite satisfying. We
may. not beheve altogether in the alleged Roman
origin of Clovelly, but I saw a fisherman, one of
the company on this bench, whose clean-shaven
face was the very counterpart of Julius Caesar's.
Clovelly fishermen are famed for their endur-
ance and Clovelly herrings for their flavour. All
through the West the fame of these herrings has
gone forth. Yarmouth and Lowestoft may mea-
sure the catch of herring by the " last." Clovelly
reckons so many '* maise." A " maise " is 612,
and is arrived at as follows : three herrings make
one " cast," i.e. a handful : fifty cast, with an
odd cast thrown in, equal the Scriptural " mira-
culous draught," and make one maund, and four
maunds equal 612 fish = a " maise."
Buildings — not merely the old limekiln that
looks like a defensible blockhouse, but dwelling-
houses also — come down to the very margin of
'' Kaay pule " : in particular the strangely pictur-
esque cottage, with balcony perilously strutted out
from its walls, known as " Crazy Kate's," or rather
" Craazy Kaate." The fishermen affect a supreme
ignorance and indifference about " Crazy Kate."
If you ask them, they will look enquiry at one
another — and will know nothing as to the name,
which appears on every one of those picture-
postcards that are sold, literally, by the ton every
season. It is an odd discourtesy ; the fact being
that every one in Clovelly is perfectly well ac-
THE "HOBBY DRIVE" 223
quainted with the legend which teUs how one
Kate LyaU, who hved here many years ago, lost
her sweetheart and went " maazed " — as we say
in the West.
The " Hobby Drive " is one of the most charm-
ing features of Clovelly. It is a two and a half
miles' cliff drive, branching off from the main road
at a lodge-gate, where one pays fourpence for the
privilege of traversing that glorious winding-way
turning and twisting back upon itself at hairpin
corners, in negotiating the contours of the cliffs.
It was a " hobby " of its constructor, hence the
name. From this fern-bordered tree-shaded drive
are obtained the finest peeps of Clovelly, down
there hundreds of feet below : a toy port, an artist's
dream, a — in fact anything rather than the reality
it seems, so dainty and exquisite is the view.
CHAPTER XVI
MOUTH MILL AND BLACK CHURCH ROCK — THE
COAST TO HARTLAND — HARTLAND POINT —
HARTLAND ABBEY — HARTLAND QUAY
Wild scrambling is the portion of him who would
explore the coastline between Clovelly and Hart-
land, and those who undertake the task, or the
pleasure — and it is both — are few. The way lies
by the church and Clovelly Court, adjoining :
that church where Kingsley's father was rector,
and whence the novelist of " Westward Ho ! " him-
self drew so much inspiration. Quaint epitaphs
are found, notably :
" Think not that yontli will keep yon free,
For Deatli at twenty-seven months called off nie."
To visit the cliff-top of Gallantry Bower, in
Clovelly Park, a fee is demanded, as also to see
Mouth Mill ; the receipts, in common with those
paid for entrance to the Hobby Drive, being de-
voted, it is announced, " to local charities." Now
Clovelly is a small place, and prosperous, the
receipts large, and the demands for charity neces-
sarily small : it seems to an unprejudiced observer
tliat tlie statement needs to be ami)lified. More-
224
MOUTH MILL
225
over, it is not altogether fair that visitors should
be taxed by the owners of Clovelly Court, who
receive an excellent rent-roll from Clovelly village,
and should thus relieve themselves of a natural
obligation to return in charity a percentage of
the tribute they are paid.
But now for Mouth Mill. Disregarding all
notices with such flapdoodle as " Private," and
" Trespassers will be prosecuted," generally known
CLOVELLY, FROM THE SEA.
among lawyers as " wooden liars," you turn from
Clovelly churchyard into a farmyard, then left and
then right, along some park-like paths ; soon
finding yourself on a rough upland in company
with a rude signpost pointing a wizened finger
" To Hartland." On the right is a gate marked
" Private," leading into a woodland drive. Tak-
ing no notice of that impudent attempt to warn
the inoffensive stranger off a remarkably pretty
coast scene, you descend through the woods by a
29
226
THE NORTH DEVON COAST
well-defined road, and come at last to Mouth Mill ;
one of the typical gullies of this coast, with a
stream losing itself on a beach composed of giant
pebbles and strange, contorted rocks. A lonely
cottage, the usual limekiln, and a landing-place,
obviously where the Clovell}^ Court coals are
landed, are the items completing the scene. A
pyramidal rock of almost coal-black hue discloses
CLOVELLY CHURCH.
itself as you scramble down to the sea. This is
Black Church Rock : a huge mass with a hole in
tlie middle of it, and ail its strata on end.
The unimpeded cliff-path scrambler can find
a way from this beach up Windbury Head. Arrived
there, in absolute solitude, down dives the path
again, and up to the gigantic mass of Exmans-
worthy Cliff. Here the going is extremely difficult,
but the scenery is sufficient reward, even for these
exertions. Fatacott Cliff, the loftiest of all these
THE COAST TO HARTLAND 227
ramparted outlooks, midway between Clovelly and
Hartland, is the scene of many a shipwreck. Few
winters pass without some unfortunate vessel
ending here.
A long succession of cliffs leads at last to Eldern
Point and thence into the wild inlet of Shipload
Bay, whose shore, like most of these nooks, is
paved with dark ribs of rock. Finally, West
BLACK CHURCH ROCK.
Titchberry Cliffs and Barley Bay, lead to Hartland
Point itself ; noblest in outline of all ; with its
coastguard station on the windy ridge, and the
lighthouse, built so recently as 1874, on a rocky
platform, two-thirds of the way down to the sea.
Here and onwards to Upright Cliff and Hartland
Quay, the furious wash of the Atlantic is supremely
noticeable, and has carved out the face of the land
in fantastic manner. Pillared rocks, styled by
some imaginative geographer the " Cow and
228 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Calf," astonish by their bold aspect, and still more
by their want of resemblance to Calf or Cow.
Follows then the hollow of Smoothlands, with
Damehole Point ; on the very verge, as it would
seem, of becoming an island, through the violence
of the sea eating away the softer parts of the rock.
Beyond this, the hollow of Black Mouth, well
named from its inky rock ledges, opens, with an
enchanting view inland, up a wooded valley,
where a noble mansion may be seen in the distance.
That is " Hartland Abbey," the country resi-
dence so-called. Here, in the beautiful valley
that, with its broad, level bottom, is more than a
" combe," Gytha, wife of Earl Godwin and
mother of the unfortunate King Harold, who lost
life and kingdom at the Battle of Hastings, founded
a college of secular canons, as a thank-offering to
God and St. Nectan for the preservation of her
husband from shipwreck. In the reign of Henr}^
the Second, this establishment was re-founded by
Geoffry de Dynham as a monastery under Augus-
tine rule ; and through the centuries it prospered
in this remote valley progressively enriched by
the pious and the wicked alike : by the pious out
of their piety, and by the wicked by way of com-
pounding for their sins. And at last it ended in
the usual confiscating way which makes the story
of the monasteries in the time of Henry the Eighth
seem to some so unmerited a tragedy, and to others
a tardy, but well-earned retribution. From the
Abbot who surrendered Hartland Abbey and its
lands to Henry the Eighth, the property went by
HARTLAND ABBEY 231
royal gift to one whose own name was, curiously
enough, Abbott. From him it descended in turn
to the Luttrells, the Orchards, and the Bucks,
who in 1858 changed their name to Stucley. It
was an Orchard who in 1779 built the existing
mansion, that is seated so comfortably in the
sheltered green strath, away from the winds
rioting on those exposed uplands from which we
have just now descended. He built in that allu-
sive architectural style for which one may coin
the word " ecclesiesque "; a midway halting
between church architecture and domestic.
Strange to say, he retained the Early English
cloisters of the old Abbey, and here they are to
this day.
It really is strange that he should — or that
his architect, for him, should— have kept the
cloisters, for the spirit of the age — it was the age
of Horace Walpole, you know — was remarkably
addicted to a kind of wry-necked appreciation of
Gothic architecture, and given to destroy genuine
antiquities, only to erect on the site of them imita-
tive Gothic with eighteenth-century frills and
embellishments. The '' men of taste " who flour-
ished towards the close of the eighteenth century
were quite convinced that they could have taught
the men who built in earlier ages something new
in the way of Gothic : and they were, in a way,
right. But what a way it was !
There were some queer characters in these
districts of old, and none more striking than an
ancient scion of the Stucley family — Thomas
232 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
Stucley, who was born in, or about, 1525 and died
fighting the Moors, at the Battle of Alcazar,
ex parte the King of Portugal, in 1578. There can
be little doubt that, when he ended thus, Queen
Elizabeth and her Ministers of State, like Dog-
berry, thanked God they were rid of a knave ; for
Thomas Stucley was adventurer, pirate, renegade,
and traitor to his country, and the cause of in-
numerable alarms and embarrassments. One of
the five sons of Sir Hugh Stucley, of Affeton, near
Ilfracombe, he formed something of a mystery :
vague rumours that he was really an illegitimate
son of Henry the Eighth following all his escapades.
These were strengthened by the lenient treatment
with which his most serious and inexcusable doings
were visited by Queen Elizabeth. Always of an
adventurous and reckless nature, and perhaps not
a little tainted with madness, he proposed, when
scarce more than a youth, to colonise Florida, and
in 1563 set out with six ships and three hundred
men, for the purpose. There must have been
something unusual in the relations between him-
self and Queen Elizabeth, for him to have inter-
viewed her, before he set out, in the terms ascribed
to him. " He blushed not," we read, " to tell
Elizabeth to her face that he preferred rather to
be sovereign of a molehill than the highest subject
to the greatest king in Christendom, and that he
was assured he should be a prince before his death."
Humouring this extravagant language, Eliza-
beth replied, " I hope I shall hear from you when
you are settled in your principality."
HARTLAND ABBEY 233
" I will write unto you," quoth Stucley.
" In what language ? " asked the Queen.
" In the style of princes," returned he ; " to
our dear sister."
Fine language, this, to employ to one of those
imperious Tudors, whose idea of the most effective
repartee was the capital one of the headsman's
axe !
Stucley, however, appears to have been allowed
the most extraordinary licence. Instead of
colonising Florida and entering the family circle
of princes, he roved the seas for two years, occupy-
ing his formidable fleet in piracy. Not even in
the age of Elizabeth, when the Armada incident
was so fresh, could the nation afford to allow
piratical attacks upon foreigners to be con-
ducted on this scale. The English Ambassador to
the Court of Madrid " hung his head for shame "
when the doings of Stucley were brought to his
notice, and that irresponsible person was dis-
avowed. A squadron was even fitted out to
arrest him, and did so at Cork in 1565 ; but he
was merely, in effect, told not to do it again, and
released. Afterwards he was employed by the
Government in Ireland ; but, with the passion for
intrigue and an absolute inability to act in a
straightforward manner that possessed him, he
became a Roman Cathohc, and, resorting to
Spain, endeavoured to bring about a Spanish in-
vasion of Ireland. In anticipation of the success
of this project, the King of Spain created him
Duke of Ireland, but the plan failed. At length,
30
234 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
busy in all quarters in seeking trouble, he aided
the Portuguese in Morocco, and was slain in the
fighting there.
The exploits of this restless person were made
much of in a book of his adventures published not
long after his death, and in it he appears some-
thing of a hero ; but a detailed and intimate
account of his career shows him to have been as
mean and sordid a scoundrel in domestic affairs as
he was bold and grasping in adventure.
A spot up the valley, whence a beautiful near
view of Hartland Abbey is obtained, is known as
Bow Bridge, and from it a road climbs steeply,
bringing up at the village of Stoke, dwarfed by
the great body and tall massive tower of its church,
generally called Hartland church, although that
town is situated out of sight, a mile further inland.
The church is dedicated to Saint Nectan, who was
a very popular saint in the West, as those travelling
into Cornwall will find, to this day. A gigantic
effigy of Nectan still remains on the eastern wall
of the tower, and the high-church bias of the
neighbourhood may be readily assumed from the
restored churchj^ard cross, with its Calvary, its
sculptured scenes from the life of Nectan and of
Gytha, and its inscription, " Nos salva rex cruce
xte tua."
This great church of St. Nectan has often been
styled " the Cathedral of Nortli Devon." Re-
built in the fourteenth century, it is, of course,
wholly in tlie Perpendicular style, and equally of
course, presents a tlioroughly well-balanced and
HARTLAND ABBEY 235
symmetrical mass, without any of those additions
from time to time, or those changes of plan, that
render churches built b}^ degrees throughout the
centuries so picturesque. St. Nectan's exhibits
regularity and preciseness to the last degree. The
tall tower, over a hundred and forty feet high,
was doubtless built especially as a landmark for
sailors.
The fine lofty nave is divided from the chancel
by a magnificently carved fifteenth-century oaken
rood-screen, which, if not actually finer than those
of Pilton, Atherington, and Swimbridge, all in
North Devon, is at an}^ rate on the same level of
craftsmanship. In the chancel remains a stone
slab with epitaph of Thomas Docton :
" Here lie I at the chancel door,
Here lie I, because I'm poor.
The further in, the more you pay ;
Here lie I, as warm as they."
Word for word this is the same as the epitaph upon
one " Bone Phillip," at Kingsbridge, South Devon.
Many curious details survive the restoration of
1850 and the fire of 1901 that destroyed the roof
and narrowly missed wrecking the entire church.
Among them is the " Guard Chamber," over the
porch ; the " Pope's Chamber," as it is here styled.
In the stone stairs to it is a hollow space, perhaps
made for the purpose of holding holy water, where-
with to exorcise demons. The parish stocks,
retired from active service in the cause of law and
order, are kept in this room, which, with its fire-
236 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
place, is, or might easily be made, comfortable
enough. Remains of the old wooden pulpit, in-
scribed ** God Save Kinge James Fines," have
puzzled many. The wood-carver probably meant
" Finis " ; but that does not help us much to
understand his further meaning ; and we must
leave it at that.
The ''Account Book of Church Expenses," from
1597 to 1706, still surviving, affords many an
interesting glimpse into old days at Hartland ;
proving, among other things, how lonely was the
situation and wild the life here. The church
appears to have been fully armed against aggres-
sion, whether by sea or land ; for we read how
the churchwardens paid for " three bullett bagges
for the churche musquettes " ; and " Paid for
lace to fasten the lyninge of the morians belonging
to the churche corselettes, and for priming irons
for the churche musquettes, ii^." Furthermore :
" Paid for a hilt and handle and a scabert for a
sworde, and for mendinge a dagger of the churche,
iis."
Roger Syncocke is down for one penny, " for
mending a churche pike." Altogether, this seems
a cheap lot for these bloody-minded Hartlanders ;
but a further entry of six pounds ten shillings,
" for arms," seems to indicate that they were
really dangerous people, best left alone. And that
appears to have been the general healthy impres-
sion ; for we do not read anywhere of battle,
murder, and sudden death in these purlieus. "If
you would have peace prepare for war," was
HARTLAND QUAY 237
doubtless the axiom acted upon here ; and the
truth of it was duly proven.
Hartland Quay, half a mile down the road, is
an example of the overweening confidence of man
in his ability to battle successfully with the forces
of nature. You see, as you come down the road
over the down, a tumultuous ocean, no longer the
Bristol Channel, sometimes dun-coloured with the
outpourings of the Severn, and not, except under
HARTLAND QUAY.
extreme provocation, to be stirred to great waves,
but the Atlantic Ocean itself, dark blue with great
crested waves rolling inshore, whether it be calm
weather or boisterous. Only, in the last case, the
always majestic sight becomes not a little terrify-
ing here.
Where the down curves to the sea and the road
dips steeply, in a hairpin corner, a rugged point,
all bristling with black, jagged rocks, runs out,
and in between them is a little flat space — the
Quay. On one side is an isolated conical hill,
capped with a flagstaff, and on the other a formid-
able reef, black as ink, with the rock-strata tipped
perpendicularly in some convulsion that attended
238 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
the world's birth. Between these extremes hes
the opening for the entrance of small craft, and a
sorry haven it must be for any distressed mariner
in severe weather. The place is lonely, save for
the '' Hartland Quay Hotel " and a few coast-
guard cottages ; and the stone pier built out to
sea, by which it was proposed to make Hartland
Quay in some small way a harbour, has been
battered utterly out of existence by the waves.
Watching the enormous walls of water, curving
and advancing with an imperious unhasting
grandeur, you do not wonder that anything less
solid than the living rock should go down before
them.
The breaking rollers fill the scene with briny
particles that hang in air like frost and taste salt
on the lips, and the wind blows strong and in-
vigorating from its journey of thousands of miles
across the open sea.
An easy path leads from this point around
Catherine Tor and its waterfall, into a wide moor-
like valley where a little stream, fussing noisily in
its peaty bed among occasional boulders, hurries
along to join the sea. The scene where this rivu-
let, arriving abruptly at the cliff's edge, falls sheer
over it, in a long spout of about a hundred feet, is
the most dramatic thing on the coast of North
Devon. Imagine the lonely valley, not in itself
very remarkable, suddenly shorn off in a clean
cut, disclosing a smooth face of rock as black as
coal, ending in a little beach — and there you have
Speke's Mouth, as it is called.
HARTLAND QUAY 239
From here it is possible to follow the cliffs to
Welcombe Mouth : a fatiguing journey. The
quicker way, and also perhaps the more beautiful,
is up the valley and into the road ; coming down
into the wooded vale of Welcombe Mouth by a
zigzag route, amid a tangle of undergrowth. The
village of Welcombe, which takes its name from
a holy well dedicated to St. Nectan, is marked by
its church-tower a mile inland ; the valley itself
being solitary, except for one very new and blatant
farmstead. Here, as in all these other vales
dipping to the sea, a little stream goes swirling
down through the tangled brakes of the combe, to
end ineffectively on the beach.
Welcombe Mouth is associated with the exploits
of " Cruel Coppinger," supposed to have been a
Danish sea-captain, wrecked off Hartland. Thrown
ashore in dramatic fashion, and narrowly escaping
death at the hands of the half-savage Welcombe
people of over a century ago, who nursed odd
prejudices against allowing wrecked sailors to
survive, he settled awhile in the district, and him-
self became a wrecker and smuggler. He and his
exploits are now part of local folk-lore, and the
novelists have got hold of him too ; but it would
seem that, cast ashore with clothes all torn from
him by the fury of the waves, he recovered con-
sciousness only in time to prevent his being
knocked on the head. Jumping up, seizing a
cutlass, and vaulting, naked as he was, on to the
back of a horse, he galloped up the combe to the
sheltering house of some people named Hamlyn,
240 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
parents of the Dinah Hamlyn whom he subse-
quently married.
The exploits of Coppinger the Cruel, as they
survive in legend, verge upon the incredible. How
he beheaded a ganger with his own cutlass on the
gunwale of a boat, how he thrashed the parson at
the dinner-table, and how he was wafted away by
a mysterious ship, from off the romantic-looking
Gull Rock, that looms darkly off the coast ; are
they not all enshrined in the folk-lore of the West,
and particularly in the verses of which here is a
sample ?
'' Woukl you know of Cruel Coppinger ?
He came from a foreign land ;
He was brouglit to us by the salt water
And carried away by the wind."
And now, over the steep hill dividing Welcombe
Mouth from Marsland Mouth, we come to the
conclusion of the coast of North Devon. Marsland
Mouth is a fit ending : the very culmination of
loneliness. If the scenery of its seaward end is
not so rugged as that of many of these " mouths,"
the extraordinary exuberance of the close-grown
thorn, oak, and hazel thickets that have entirely
overgrown the valley is unparalleled anywhere else
in all these miles. Only a rugged footpath, closely
beset with bushes, leads down to the shore. It
must be admitted, however, that evidence of
Marsland Mouth being within toucli of modern
life is not lacking — is only too evident, indeed — in
two huge, outrageously ugly, plaster-faced houses,
MARSLAND MOUTH 241
of the very worst type of Ladbroke Grove
"architecture," that look down from a ridge into
the romantic cleft. The atrocity of their being
placed here is beyond words.
I have styled Marsland Mouth " romantic," and
not without due warrant ; for does it not appear,
early in the pages of "Westward Ho!" as the
scene of Rose Salterne's adventure with the " white
witch," Lucy Passmore ?
White witch or black, her beliefs were suffici-
ently dark, and the mystic rites she practised were
as uncanny as any of those in common usage by
the more inimical kind of witches — the kind who
" overlooked " you, played the very deuce and all
with your sheep and cattle, and generally har-
boured a " familiar " in the shape of a black
tom cat.
And really, as you read of her in Kingsley's
pages, she was a person to be feared, on more than
supernatural grounds, being as brawny and
muscular as a man : a good deal more so than her
husband. It must be no sinecure, to be the hus-
band of a witch, and a muscular one at that.
A stranger, tracing his hazardous way that
night down the tangled glen, to the sea, would
have had any stray beliefs he may have harboured
as to the existence of mermaids presently con-
firmed ; for we read that Rose, wishing to see
who would be her future husband, by direction of
the witch, undressed on the midnight beach, in the
cold light of the full moon, waded waist-deep,
into the sea with her mirror, and performed the
31
242 THE NORTH DEVON COAST
incantation. Except that Kingsley speaks of the
" blaze " of the midnight moon, it is a magnificent
scene. Ordinary observers are at one with the
poets — and at odds with Kingsley — in thinking of
moonlight as a cold flood, rather than as a " blaze."
A ring of flame, from the phosphorescence she
stirred as she waded into the water, encircled her
waist, and, as she looked down into the waves,
every shell that crawled on the white sand was
visible under the moonbeams, while the seaweeds
waved like banners. Almost determined to turn
and flee she, with an effort, dipped her head three
times in the water, hurried out of the waves, and,
looking through the strands of her wet hair into
the mirror she carried, repeated the verse the
white witch had taught her :
A maiden, pure, lo ! here I stand,
Neither on sea, nor yet on land ;
Angels watch me on either hand.
If you be landsman, come down the strand ;
If you be sailor, come up the sand ;
If you be angel, come from the sky,
Look in my glass, and pass me by.
Look in my glass, and go from the shore ;
Leave me, but love me for evermore.
It was with a not unnatural superstitious fear,
under these magical moonlit circumstances that,
even as she was gazing into the mirror and re-
peating those lines, hurried footsteps were heard
descending to the Mouth. They were not, how-
ever, angelic or demoniac apparitions nor even
earthly lovers : merely fugitive Jesuits and traitors.
MARSLAND MOUTH
243
It is sad to find this scene overlooked by those
hideous stuccoed houses on the ridge, but, at any-
rate, as I straddle the little summer-time trickle
of the stream in the bottom, dividing Devon and
Cornwall, I cannot but admire the fine note of
picturesqueness and high romance on which this
coast-line ends.
AT M.VKSLAND MOUTH.
INDEX
Abbotsham, 205
Appledore, 86, 140, 170, 174,
197, 200
Armada guns, 1 89
Ariavia, Barnstaple, 208
Baggy Point, 140
Barle, River, 5
Barley Bay, 227
Barnstaple, 27, 29, 30, 86, T13,
115, 154-72, 208
Barricane Beach, 138
Barum, i.e. Barnstaple, 161
Benson, Thomas, 115
Berrynarbor, 77, 95, 128-30
Bickington, 174
Bideford, 86, 115, 170- ^73^
176-97, 205
and Westward Ho ! Rail-
way, 197
Black Church Rock, 226
Mouth, 228
Blackstone Point, 68
Bloody Corner, 199
" Blue Ball " inn, Countisbury,
36
Bone Hill, 198
Bonhill Top, 52
Brannock, Saint, 141, 142,
144. 145
Braunton, 142, 144-9. ^94
Burrows, 2, 143, 149^54.
198
Brendon Two Gates, 6
Briary Caves, 80
Bridge Ball, 6, 31
Buck's Cross, 206
Mill, 206
Bull Point, 132
Burrow Nose, 80
Caen, River, 149
Capern, Edward, 193-6
Capstone Hill, 84, 92, 97
Parade, 85, 94, 97
Cary family, 211
Castle Rock, 45, 50, 51
Catherine Tor, 238
Chain Beach, 85
Chambercombe, 97, 123-8
Champernowne family, 89, 128
" Chanter's Folly," 175
Chapman Barrows, 5
Clausa Vallis, (?) Clovelly, 208
Cliff Railway, Lynmouth, 22-
40
Clovelly, 2, 90, 99, 100, ii3>
190, 205-26
Combemartin, 68, 69, 71-80,
88,95
Compass Hill, 84
Countisbury, 28, 31, 35. 3^
Foreland, 37-45
" Cow and Calf " Rocks, ''227
Crock Point, 52
Croyde, 141
" Cruel Coppingcr," 239
Damehole Point, 228
" Devil's Cheese-%vi-ing," 50
" Chimney," 121
" Limekiln," 120
" Duty Point," 26, 45
East-the-Water, 176, 189
Eldern Point, 227
245
246
INDEX
Exe Head, 5
Exmansworthy Cliff, 226
Exmoor, 4
Faggus, Tom, 158
Fairy Cross, 206
Farley, 31, 32
Water, 6
Fatacott Cliff, 226
Fremington, 28, 174
Freshwater Cascade, 210
Gallantry Bower, 224
Georgehani, 1 40
Glen Lyn, 1 5
Glenthorne, 2, 35, 38, 39, 41,
42
" Golden Lion," Barnstaple,
166
Great Hangman Point, 66, 6-j,
68
Grenville family, 182-9
Gull Rock, 240
Halliday, Rev. W. S., 42
Hamlyn family, 211
Hangman Hills, 66-8
" Hangman Stone," 66
Hannington, Bishop, 59
Hartland, tj, 224, 227
— ■ — ^ Abbey, 228-31, 234
-Point, 116, 133, 208, 227
Quay, 227, 237
Havergal, Rev. W. H., 14
Heanton Court, 154
Punchardon, 194
Heddon, River, 6^
Heddon's Mouth, 2, 44, 58,
62-4
Hele Bay, 82, 97
High Veer, 63
Hillsborough, 82, 97
Hoar Oak Stone, 6
Hobby Drive, 207, 210, 223,
224
Holdstone Down, 65
" Hoops Inn," 206
Horns Cross, 206
Hubba's Stone, 200
" Hunter's Inn," 64
Ilfracombe, 31, 80, 82, 84-106
" Inkerman Bridge," 57
Instow, 174, 190, 200
" Jennifrid's Leap," 33, 52
Jennings, Louis, 22
KiNGSLEY, Charles, 72, 96,
138, 176-8, 181, 189, 190,
198, 201, 202, 224, 241
Lamator, 107, 108
Lantern Hill, 84, 88, 89, 97
Lee "Abbey," 29, 51-3
Bay (near Lynton), 52-6
• (near Ilfracombe),
131
Lundy, 106-22, 175
Lyn, River, 5-7, 10, 14, 17, n
Lynmouth, 2-21, 31, ^,2, 90,
99, I GO
Lynton, 3, 21-5, 28, 34, 95,
99, 160
and Barnstaple Railway,
22-4, 57
Marisco Castle, 108
Marsland Mouth, 240-45
Martinhoe, 57
Montagu, H.M.S., 1 16-19
Morte Point, 133
Stone, 133
INIorthoe, 132-7
Mouth Mill, 224-6
Nectan, St., 234, 239
" New Inn," Clovclly, 210-14,
216, 217
North Walk, Lynmouth, 44
Northam, 197-201
Burrows, 143
" Pack of Cards " ( " King's
Arms"), Combemartin, 72,
7l> 80
INDEX
247
Pebble Ridge, The, 198, 201
204
Peppercombe, 206
Pilton, 154-7, 235
Point Desolation, 41
Portledge, 190, 205
Putsborough, 141
" Queen Anne's Walk,"
Barnstaple, 167
" Ragged Jack," 50, 51
Rapparee Cove, 87
Rat Island, 107
Rawdon, General, 1 1
"Red Lion," Clovelly, 211,
220, 221
Rillage Point, 82
" Rodney," 41
Rone, Earl of, 88
"Royal Hotel," Bideford, 177
Runnacleaves, The, 84
Samson's Bay, 82
Saunton, 142-4
Schorne, Master John, 143
" Seven Brethren Bank," 173
Sherracombe, 68
Shipload Bay, 227
Shutter Rock, 116, 120
Sillery Sands, 35
Simonsbath, 35
Smallmouth, 80
Smoothlands, 228
Speke's Mouth, 238
Stoke, 234-7
Stucley family, 231-4
Tapeley Park, 176, 190
Taw, River, 149, 152, 156, 172,
174, 198
Templar Rock, 122
" Temple Bar," 219
Torridge, River, 174, 198
Tors, The, Ilfracombe, 84, 94,
97, 131
" Tors Hotel," Lynmouth, 3, 9,
13, 19, 37
Tracy family, 134-6
Trentishoe, 57, 65
" Trevelyan Hotel," Barn-
staple, 167
Upright Cliff, 227
Valley of Rocks, 44, 47-51
Watermouth, 28, 80
Castle, 81
Watersmeet, 6
Welcombe Mouth, 239
West Challacombe Farm, 69
West Titchberry Cliffs, 227
Westward Ho ! 143, 190, 201-4
Wichehalse family. Story of,
25-33
Widemouth, 80
Head, 82
Wildersmouth, 85, 97
Windbury Head, 226
Wooda Bay, 44, 52, 56-7
Woolacombe Bay, 134, 137-40,
142
Woolfardisworthy,
Wringapeak, 58
Wringcliff Bay, 51
Yeo, River, 157
206
PKINTED AND BOUND BV
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
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